Amy Loves Books

lily describes her bad day
minohleeah (what she fell on) = linoleum. beware the minohleeah.

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i'll be back to blogging in the next few days. i've been the sole parent on duty since chip has been out of town at a ministry conference. i've also been trying to pull together a submission for 100 Bloggers. a few months ago, i was invited to be a part of this project and in full "do as i say, not as i do" teacher-mode i submitted my essay on the last possible day.

in the meantime - literary criticism from one of my perceptive ninth graders:

student: I brought back the copy of Leaves of Grass that I borrowed.
me: What did you think of Walt Whitman?
student: Oh, he was all right.
me (noticing her indifference): You didn't really like it, did you?
student: He sure sings a lot.

(I had to pause for a second to figure out what she meant:1,2,3,4,and etc.)

me: Yeah. I guess you're right. He does sing alot.

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You are the pilot.


Saint Exupery's 'The Little Prince' Quiz.
brought to you by Quizilla

via bobbie via anj

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my husband and some students have created a dance mix version of Basic Christianity by John Stott for the Bread website.

(To find it on the website, go to the Devo Lunch page and click the "O" in "Devo Lunch")

Warning: may cause seizures in individuals with strobe light sensitivity

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Ever since I found out that my friend Gypsy is pregnant, I've been meaning to pull this picture out of storage and post it. When Lily was three years old, she drew my favorite picture. For years, I had it taped on my kitchen cabinet.

She called it "Mommy Feeling Happy Because Lily Is In Her Tummy Ready To Come Out".

I love everything about it: the spring shade of green she picked out, the confused but giddy smile on my face, the way my fingers are reaching up as if pregnancy was a tricky yoga posture.

I look at this picture and think: She's right. That's just how I felt.

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My son was hospitalized three times in his first year of life. He came home from the hospital with a baby monitor. Later, he acquired a nebulizer. He was born in August, and faced that first winter cold and flu season as a tiny baby. I became paranoid freak mother.

I was already a little paranoid about germs. When I started teaching two years before, I heard all sorts of horror stories about how sick first year teachers get. A veteran teacher told me to keep Lysol in the room and spray down the desks regularly. It was the best teaching advice I ever received. I washed my hands before lunch, and I sprayed Lysol after a sick kid had been in my room with used Kleenex spread all over their desk. I only got sick once. This convinced me that Lysol and soap were my new best friends.

When Arden was born, I was freaked out by all the people touching him. My husband was a youth minister at the time, and we would go to church and I would watch in horror as some person would blow their nose, then reach down and take my son's tiny hand in theirs. To this day, it astonishes me that people are so clueless about touching babies. I've had people pick my baby up out of the infant carrier (without asking) and then hold the child while they had a conversation with me about how everyone in their family spent the last week stuck at home with a stomach flu. You may think I am kidding, but I promise I'm not exaggerating. Maybe the fact that I was a minister's wife made them feel like they had special access to my children, but I think it is general ignorance, because it was not just at church that I had to fend off the sick baby touchers. They were everywhere: in lines at the grocery store, in doctor's office waiting rooms, at playgrounds. This is why, when I found out it existed, I became very attached to instant hand sanitizer. Very attached. It became my new best friend.

I love my hand sanitizer. For years, I carried it in my diaper bag. I keep a bottle in the car. I have it on my key chain. There is a value-size bottle on my desk at school. I keep some in my purse. Wherever I go, Purell goes too. I send little bottles to school with my kids when they have field trips. Instead of sending them to school with the admonition to "Have a Great day!", in the winter months, I more frequently say, "Don't forget to wash your hands!".

Over the weekend, I gave Lily a used toilet paper roll to play with. "You can make a puppet, or a spyglass", I told her. About an hour later, she brought me the "present" she had made me. A beautiful shrine to Purell (with a mini bottle stuck inside).



(And if anyone who reads this blog is a chemist, doctor, or biologist - please do not write me or leave a comment to say that Purell does not actually work. I do not want to know. Allow me my placebo effect and delusions of germ killing power.)

One of Sarah's posts made me think about Spanish Moss. Without a doubt, the thing I miss most about Florida is Spanish Moss. I love the way it drips from the trees. I always ignored my mother's warnings about chiggers, and pulled it down by the handfulls. I lined shoeboxes with it to make nests. I was not above wearing it on my head like a wig, or a beard.

My favorite thing to do was simply to sit with the moss in my lap and run my fingernails across the tendrils, revealing a strong red thread-like fiber underneath the green-gray moss.

My saving grace the year I started kindergarten was my intern teacher, Mr. H. He was a six-foot tall hippie with shoulder length blond hair, flip-flops, blue jean overalls, and a guitar. I loved him. He would sing "Homeward Bound" and "Seasons in the Sun". I'd sit, cross-legged, in front of him and dream of railway stations and tickets to my destination. On cowboy day, he wore a red bandana, brought in a real leather saddle, slung it over a bale of hay, and let us pretend we were riding a horse. I was in love.

One morning, he took us outside for story time. We sat under a huge live oak on the playground and he handed us all a piece of Spanish Moss. Then, he began to tell us the legend of Spanish Moss.

Once upon a time there was a handsome young Spanish soldier with a red beard who fell in love with an Indian maiden. They vowed to love each other for all eternity. When her father and brothers found out about the secret love, they were angry, and they captured the soldier and tied him up in a Live Oak tree. They told him that if he would agree to leave the Indian maiden, they would set him free. He refused. Deprived of food and water, he grew weaker and weaker. Still, he refused to rescind his vow of eternal love. The Spaniard died, and the maiden refused to take a husband. Even in death, she swore that she would remain faithful to her Spanish lover. As a sign of their eternal love, the his handsome red beard continued to grow, even after he was dead. It covered the branches of the tree, then it began to hang from all the trees.

At this point, my teacher asked us to carefully rub away the gray on the Spanish Moss. I could not believe my eyes. It was the Spaniard's red beard! I was in awe. It was the most romantic story I had ever heard. From that moment on, I found it impossible to look at Spanish Moss without silently reciting one of my favorite words:

always

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in honor of valentines day, all last week was "treat her like a lady week" at school. the festivities culminated today in an explosion of mylar and conversation hearts.

the front office was filled to overflowing with balloons, bears, and flowers. when i went to check on my copy request, i literally gasped at the sight. it was like a scene from a preteen fantasy - and the girl in me that had once collected music boxes and unicorns was enamored by the shininess of all that love. the secretary saw me staring wide-eyed at the display and joked that she should open her own store.

right before i left, a man came in wearing worn work clothes. his boots were muddy and his pants were splattered with the debris of construction. it was obviously his lunch break. he carried a single red rose and small stuffed bear attached to an envelope. it was a gift for his daughter.

"does she know you are bringing something by?", the secretary asked. the man shook his head. she did not know. he was not expected. he just wanted to leave it for her. the secretary took his gift and promised to call his daughter to the office before the end of the school day.

this is my first year living in the inner city. one of the many things i love about my neighborhood is the valentine villages. i first noticed them last year, but i forgot about them until i was driving on saturday and i noticed an old man seated on an overturned milk crate. he had a plastic bucket of flowers between his legs, and he bent over them, arranging. a white sheet was covering the hood of his car, and he had taped down small red balloons to create a display area for his flowers.

i smiled. the valentine villages had returned.

every block or two, in the parking lots of closed down shops or check cashing/money wiring/title pawing/convenience shops these little outposts appeared, with everything you needed to treat her like a lady.

beautiful

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He is a big kid, built like a linebacker. Literally. He complains about the size of the student desks, pretends to get stuck inside of them and walks to sharpen his pencil with the desk attached to his back. I call him "Turtle" when he does this. He smiles and laughs.

Turtle gets up constantly, and teases other kids the way a third grader would. Except that he is HUGE, and when he takes their pencil or hat with a mischievous grin, the other kids feel threatened. Understandably threatened. Things turn ugly fast with him; fights are planned, and kids gang up because he is too big to jump alone. His fellow teachers and I have tried every sort of intervention, but nothing (so far) has worked.

He has a 32 average. It is February, and it is now statistically impossible for him to pass the ninth grade. This is not because he is not intelligent, or has some sort of disability. I have homeless students, and kids that are neglected. Turtle is not one of them. He chooses to fail school and get into trouble in the same way that some of my other kids choose to smoke pot, drive drunk, have unprotected sex, carry a weapon. I have one or two kids like this in every class. I asked one once if his plan was just to be a ninth grade drop-out, end up in jail, and die young. In response he shrugged.

The thing that I find the hardest to comprehend about my students is the way they live around death. Assign a narrative essay, and you read about fathers brothers mothers cousins babies uncles friends that have died. Shot. Hit by a cars. Accidents and not-accidents. My initial response was that they had to be making this crap up. Surely, there was not that much tragedy in the world. I listen to NPR, and I would have heard about all these dying people.

I've been forced to re-examine my beliefs. There is not that much senseless loss in my world. I live in a bubble where children and teenagers rarely die. Last week, there was a headline about a toddler being shot in Forest Park. A man broke into an apartment, held a gun to a two year old's head, and demanded 1,000 in tax return money. The two year old died. Instead of hearing about this story and considering it a horrific anomaly, I found myself checking the paper to find out the family's last name. I wanted to make sure it was not a relative of one of my students. This is the type of story they tell me. True stories.

Turtle is normally difficult to handle. The class that he is in is my least favorite. Most of the time, I find him distant, frustrating and defiant. One day, he told a story about watching his older brother die. It was just three years ago that his brother got hit by a car. Turtle said that for a second, his brother picked himself off the pavement and stood up. Then, it was like all of his bones just melted inside of him. He collapsed.

I listened to this story and I wondered how he could have witnessed something like that and still be choosing to get into trouble himself. In the book we were reading, the death of a friend woke the protagonist up and made her change her life for the better. That's how I think it is supposed to go. That is what happens in books, and in movies. In the world I think exists, a kid like Turtle would have been in therapy. He would have decided to go into law and advocate for tougher penalties against drunk drivers. The one kid I personally knew that died of cancer - her sister went into medicine. That made sense to me.

My kids are writing poetry. They love this. They say it is like rap, like freestyle. They want to get up and read their poems to each other. They somehow know that you snap after poetry is read. I give them ten minutes at the end of class to read out loud.

Turtle gets up and reads: I'm not afraid to die. I know I am going to die and I am not afraid . He reads with pride about being tough, about not being afraid to die. The boys that don't ever look you in the eyes read their poems about dying with raised heads and steady voices.

These boys drop out of school and never even attempt to pass. They smoke, join gangs, and start fights over cell phones. One of the girls that comes to me for advice tells me about her friend who has gotten two STDs from her boyfriend. She says her friend has been pregnant and miscarried three times. She thinks it is because of the venereal diseases. She wishes her friend would make the boy get treated but he claims that she has not gotten them from him and refuses to see a doctor. In some strange way, these kids think this kind of behavior makes them brave. Getting shot, getting high, selling drugs, having unprotected sex - these are the things that mean you are strong. These kids are empowered by the idea that they are not afraid to die.

What I want to tell them is that there's nothing brave about giving up.

Death is easy. Choosing life is so much harder.

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Tonight, Lily came and asked me to list all the boy names that start with the letter "I". There is a boy in the kindergaten class across the hall that always hugs her when he sees her, and she wanted to make him a valentine. The only problem was, she could not remember his name. Maybe if I listed all the "I" names, she would recognize it?

I paused. Lily is the only white child in kindergarten. Her best friends are named Infinity, Harmonie, Antyera, and Raven. I had a feeling I may not be able to think of the right "I" name.

Infinity?, I ventured (just in case). Lily shook her head.

Umm... Ian? Ivan? Ike? Irving? Ishmail?

Not even close. I began to get creative. Ichabod?

She laughed.

Iacocca? Nope. But Lily liked that name. She said when she had a baby, she might want to name it Iacocca. I gave up. I was all out of "I" names for a boy.

About an hour later, she proudly handed me the card she made. "I remembered his name", she said. "I knew it sounded Jesus-y".




the note she wrote

I am teaching a poetry unit.

I started my lesson on diction by playing "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2", from Pink Floyd's iconic album, The Wall. They loved it. But they were curious - who was this Pink Floyd?

"You know", I said. "The Wall."

Nope. They never heard of him.

I was in shock. I thought Pink Floyd transcended time and race. It's music about drugs. My students do a lot of drugs. They are constantly being suspended for smoking pot.

In my stunned disbelief, I almost asked them what they watched when they were stoned if they were not watching The Wall.

Luckily, I caught myself.

After we discussed the song, we read "The Pool Players" by Gwendolyn Brooks. Then, my students had to write their own poem in the style of Brooks' poem. The first line had to be a statement defining today's teens. The middle needed to talk about attitudes and activities common among their peers. The last line had to express a hope for or fear about their generation.

One of my students has published her poem online. She wrote it in fifteen minutes. I think it is brilliant. Read it out loud to really hear the rhythm.

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It was in graduate school that I learned not to write "it's" to show possession. I felt like an idiot. Then, in my last semester, I took a class on the history of English grammar and my professor explained that grammatical rules are in constant flux. He gave the example of "it's" vs. "its", and said that about 70% of his underclassmen come to college writing "it's" in situations where they should use "its". He said that he used to correct them, but them, one day, he visited his son's second grade classroom and watched as the teacher wrote "it's", incorrectly, on the chalkboard. At that point, he says he realized that he was engaging in a losing battle.

So, I was taught "it's". I now know that this is incorrect. Instinctively, as I type, I write the word incorrectly. Always.
I have to go back, find the bad little "it's", and edit myself. I usually catch my mistakes, but sometimes I slip and I silently curse whoever it was that first conditioned me to use the incorrect form of the word.

The fact is, most of us were never taught grammar. In the previously mentioned graduate class, I witnessed a frightening number of full fledged freak-outs. Students would yell at each other, hurl accusations at the professor, and storm out of class in tears. The reason for all the anxiety was simply that we realized we were about to be sent out to teach high school English, and most of us did not know anything about formal rules of grammar.

So, I try to teach grammar. I try to make it simple. I try to explain it in a way that makes sense.

On Friday, I put up the little daily practice grammar transparency thingy that came with our textbooks. I am one of the only teachers in the school that actually uses the transparencies, because they did not come with an answer key. This makes people nervous. To be honest, it makes me nervous. But I take a deep breath, and I tell myself that I am capable of correcting the errors without a cheat sheet.

Each day, the transparency features examples of two incorrect sentences, and students are supposed to find and correct the grammatical errors. On Friday, the first sentence was this:

Because his parents both dyed while he was still young Edgar Allan Poe became a foster child.

My students knew to change the spelling of "dyed". After that, every single one of them dropped the word "because" and separated the rest into two sentences. I was confused by this. They confidently explained that it was incorrect to begin a sentence with the word "because".

What? My kids have to be reminded what an adjective is; and yet, they somehow internalized a odd prohibition about starting sentences with the word "because".

"Who told you that?", I demanded.

They looked at me blankly. English teachers told them.

I paused and tried to think. Why would teachers tell them this? An idea occurred to me.

"You know how I circle the directions, 'write in complete sentences', and take points off of your reading logs?"

They nodded.

I explained: "That's because when I ask a question like, 'How do you know time has passed since the boys landed on the island?' - you reply: 'because their hair grew longer.' In a case like that, you can't begin with the word 'because'. If you use 'because' to start a sentence, you have to go on and explain both the cause and the effect."

For a brief moment, I think they got it.

I realize now that this former teacher with her "because" prohibition was just like my teacher who told me to write "its" with an apostrophe. Students are at the mercy of their English teachers, and most English teachers were never taught enough mechanics to be confident about grammar.

No wonder kids hate to write.

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I've mentioned it before, I am hopelessly addicted to the PBS "house" reality shows. I love them.

I noticed today that PBS is accepting applications for its latest series, Ranch House, which is set in 1867, in the time of Western expansion. In addition to families, they are looking for a bunch of individuals - who will get to become cowboys. How cool is that?

Come on, you know you always had a cowboy fantasy. Everyone has had a cowboy fantasy. Heck, I am a girl, and I had my little red cowgirl hat, plastic holster, and silver cap gun. I used to sit on my dad's sawhorses and imagine I was on the prairie. I had spurs that jingle jangle jingled as I went ridin merrily along. (I tended to be a singing cowgirl).

If you are single, or married and flexible enough to go back in time for five months this summer, you really ought to put in an application. Go on. You know you want to.

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I've added a few links to some bloggers that I've met recently. Most of my links are to people I have some sort a relationship with outside of the blogosphere, a few are there just because I love their writing.

Recently added:

Today's Lessons has become one of my favorite blogs. I'd like to meet Thicket Dweller one day. I'd send her telepathic messages.

If you have not read my friend (and soon to be neighbor) Hannah's blog yet, you are missing some incredible stories. you gocco girl

Abe is an Atlanta blogger that I met in the airport. His writing is both funny and insightful. abe

I have never really totally forgiven my little brother for annulling his marriage and taking away my companion/confidante/friend/sister. Through totally random blog-hopping, she found me online. I love this girl. She was there for the birth of my daughter. it's a small world after all

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In May of last year, I went to an incredible show by an artist named Cooper Sanchez. The show was called Shelter, and I loved it. More than anything, I wanted a piece of Cooper's art. (I even blogged about it.) I took a small stack of postcards advertising the show and mailed them to friends.

I bookmarked his website and hoped that one day, I would have something he made hanging in my house. I felt sad that I missed buying one of the Shelter paintings, but I was in graduate school at the time, and unemployed. Someday, I told myself. Someday I'd get a Cooper painting, and it would make me smile and wave hello when I walked in the front door.

Last November, I decided to just take a chance and send my favorite artist an email. Fan mail is weird. Ever since I read Stephen King's novel, Misery, I have felt bad about sending anything that resembles fan mail. I don't want to come across like a crazy stalker-girl. Just in case I did come across as crazy, I titled the message something like: "you don't have to reply to this". In the email, I told him that I loved his art and that I also loved trees, keys, books and the Tippens truck (especially the sort of kindness colored blue that the Tippens Truck is).


I asked Cooper if I could buy a painting. Then, I added a link to my blog (that way he could see that I really did love trees and books and keys and maybe I would seem less like a weirdo). Not too long afterwards, Cooper wrote back to say that he had read my blog. We talked on the phone, and he told me that he would make me a painting with all the things I love. My sweet husband, Chip, said it could be my Christmas gift. I did not see the painting while it was in process. Cooper painted it based on my email about trees, keys and the truck - and after reading Amy Loves Books.

Last weekend, it was finished, and I saw it for the first time:


The moon holds a real key:

At the bottom, I have a list of things to love:



The nest was a surprise that he added - a guess. It is a sparrow's nest. I do love nests. When I was kid, I was a hider. There were three places I loved to hide: in drainage pipes, in trees, inside bushes. It was inside the bushes that I would find nests. I would reach in and carefully lift abandoned nests out of the branches. They were like miracles in my hands. Every small twig and skeletal leaf was knit together as though the bird was guided by something bigger than itself. Each nest served its purpose, and when the eggs hatched and the small ones learned to fly, the small sanctuary was left behind as a talisman.

I looked at the nests in my hands and I saw Providence.

The first time I discovered an abandoned nest, I took it home to show my mother. She was angry, and said it was dirty and full of lice and mites. She refused to let me to keep it.

Despite her warnings, I could not bear to part with my nest. I sprayed it with Lysol and put it in a shoe box. The next day, I took it to school and my teacher kept it in the classroom for the rest of the year.

Some days I feel protected.

I love the painting.

I've got my list.

(Cooper is working on a new show for the summer - after he marries his lovely bride under a wise old oak tree. I saw a few of the pieces and they are breathtakingly beautiful. Lots of birds. Everyone who is nearby should try to attend)

today was the birthday of Langston Hughes. one of my students loves him the way i used to love e.e. cummings, and she gave me a copy of his autobiography to read.

it is absolutely fascinating. i learned that he travelled to Africa as a sailor and brought back a pet monkey that he loved. his mother sold the monkey without asking permission.

i took cupcakes to school in his honor.

he was born on 02-01-02.

he would have been 103 years old today.

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When my son, Arden, was a toddler, we bought a magnetic poetry kit called Really Big Words. Since Lily is starting to read, I pulled it out again.

This is my favorite thing she has written:

playing with words

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