Amy Loves Books

On Friday, we were discussing virginity in class. Specifically, we were discussing how important it was, in the time of Romeo and Juliet, for a woman to be a virgin when she married. This lead to a conversation about inheritance, and genealogy, and why men needed to make sure that any child that their wife gave birth to was, in fact, theirs.

The inevitable question came up: Did a man need to be a virgin too?. I told them that the same standard did not apply to men - and that men could (and did) sleep with servants and mistresses and other women, and that any children produced from those unions did not really count. I told them that this went on until quite recently, and I mentioned Thomas Jefferson as an example.

I asked the class if everyone knew about Thomas Jefferson's children. To my surprise, they did not. I explained that Jefferson had fathered a number of children with one of his female slaves, and that, until recently, those children and their offspring were not recognized as being descendants of Jefferson.

One of my students spoke up. Thomas Jefferson was black. I thought he had just misheard me, so I corrected his statement by saying that he had a number of black children.

The kid insisted. No, Jefferson was black. Another kid chimed in. Yeah, I've seen pictures of him and he was definitely black. I was incredulous. No, he wasn't, I insisted. My students remained adamant. Perhaps he was slightly light-skinned, they said, but they were sure he was black.

I was getting frustrated. I've heard many a conspiracy theory in my day, but I was unprepared to deal with an entire class of high school students who were convinced that they had seen photographic evidence proving that Jefferson was black.

"Listen", I said. "President Jefferson was white. Not "kind of" white, not light-skinned, totally white. He was as white as a white man can get. He was white in a Colonel- Kentucky- Fried-Chicken kind of way."

The class was silent for a minute. Finally, the boy who had started the whole debate spoke up. "You know", he said, "I think am thinking of Frederick Douglass."

I breathed sigh of relief and agreed that, yes, Frederick Douglass was indeed a black man. However, I did not realize (until I googled the images) how easy it might be to get the two men confused:

Separated at Birth?

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I keep three large bookshelves in my class filled with books that my students can check out and read. I fill them, mostly, with books I pick up at thrift stores and garage sales. I am slightly obsessive about this. I go book-hunting every single week, and it pays off. My kids love my bookshelves. Because I get the books cheaply, I have a very laid-back check-out policy: If you want to read a book, take it. When you finish, put it back. If you really loved it and want to keep it forever - that's fine.

I also tell my students that I have hundreds of books at home in my private collection, so if they want to read a specific title - chances are I have it and would be happy to loan it to them on the condition that I get it back. If I don't have it at home, let's be honest, I'll probably use the request as an excuse go and get it.

Last week, one of my honors students (a ninth grade boy) took me aside and asked about a book.

Do you have a copy of The Secret Garden?

My first thought was that, perhaps, I was on a hidden camera show. Maybe Oprah was going to pop out of the closet and offer to take my classes to Disneyworld or something, I looked around suspiciously, but all appeared in order.

My next thought was that he was, somehow, playing with me. Had I ever mentioned the book in class? I did not think so. Or, perhaps, the stuff of nightmares had happened and a student had found my blog.

I squinted my eyes at him. Why do you want to know? I demanded. Because it seemed incomprehensible that he was planning to actually read it.

He was taken aback. He stammered. Well.....uh....I had a teacher in elementary school that read it to me, and I...um....remember that I liked it.

And Oh. My. Gosh. The boy was sincere.

I am afraid I became a little too animated. That's my favorite book!!!!!! I named my daughter after that book!!!!!!!!!! Did you notice all the keys in my room?!!!??!!! (I have these life-like stickers of cool old keys all over my computer, bookshelves, and podium)

He told me that, yes, he had noticed the keys and had been wondering about them.

They are from The Secret Garden!!!!! I could tell he was not quite sure what I meant. You know - the key.... the key to the garden??!!!???

He nodded in agreement and understanding the way that a parent agrees with a small, over-excited child just to get them to shut up. I was chagrined, and realized it was time to reign in my response. It's my favorite book of all time. I repeated quietly.

I did not bring a copy immediately, because I've been slightly concerned that I freaked him out with my enthusiasm. Today, however, I am bringing a copy to class. I will try not to sing songs from the musical version when I give it to him.

My favorite book of all time!!!!!!!!!!!!

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My church sits on a hill overlooking the interstate. The location is appropriate, since the vast majority of people who attend my church drive thirty minutes or more, from the safety of the suburbs, to worship.

I love my church.

It is not flashy, or trendy, or hip or cool. It is, most definitely not young. In many ways, it is a very old fashioned church. The theology is not particularly progressive. Women's leadership is confined to the elementary school and nursery programs. There was an attempt a few years ago to move the communion portion of the service to after the sermon rather than before the sermon, and this change was met with such resistance that it was abandoned after a few weeks.

In the end, all the externals don't matter that much, because what I love about my church is that it has a servant heart. It was one of the first churches in Atlanta to offer a drug and alcohol addiction program. The church gives an almost-unheard-of fifty percent of its budget to local and overseas missions. There is a kindness there.

Last week, one of the elders at church started asking me about my job. I told him about the good and the bad, and about my challenging fourth period class. The elder I was speaking with has strong connections with the Chick-fil-a corporate headquarters. I mentioned that if he had any Chick-fil-a coupons he needed to get rid of, that I could use them as incentives in class. He pulled out his daytimer and shook his head. I'd be happy to do that, he said. Would one hundred be good?

One hundred free chicken sandwiches.

I went back to school and told the kids about the elder at my church. From now on, I said, there would be a new attendance policy. An entire week with no absences or tardies would earn them a free chicken sandwich.

Two days later, one of my students called me over to his desk. Your church is the one on the hill, right. I nodded. He clarified, Across the street from Racetrack? I nodded again.

He lowered his eyes and shook his head. Man, I threw eggs at your church once. I'm really sorry. I was about to respond that it was okay, when another boy spoke up. Hey, does your church have a basketball team?

I said it did and a group of boys started asking questions: when did they play? how could you try out? One of the JV players spoke up, followed by another.

I'd like to play basketball for your church.

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Hoodwinked might just be the funniest animated movie ever. Go see it today. With or without the kids.

It's a bizarre stream-of-conciousness riff on fairy tales and feature animation, but one done with genuine affection and respect for the genre. For a small sample of the insanity, here is a clip of Red visiting Japeth the singing mountain goat (a witch cast a spell on him and he must sing every word he says) to try to find the quickest way to Granny's house.

On the other hand...............

Remember that creepy clown doll from Poltergiest that scared the crap out of you when you were a kid? At least the movie had not been marketed to kids. My 9 year-old son, who has never been kept awake by anything, could not go to sleep after watching this trailer. What is Steven Spielberg thinking?

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In the world of high school English teachers, many people view ninth grade English as punishment: a place to pay your dues and do your time until you work your way up to the promised land of upperclassmen. I've always taught ninth grade English. I like it. I like the things we read. Romeo and Juliet. The Odyssey. For the most part, the same texts that I read when I was in ninth grade English. This semester, I am teaching ninth grade honors, and my students just finished reading Animal Farm . It was my first time teaching this novel. I read a lot of Orwell when I was in the ninth grade. It was 1984, and I suppose my teacher must have thought that it would be wrong to let the year go by without having us read 1984. We read Animal Farm too.

In 1984, reading Animal Farm was politically conservative. We all knew that Khrushchev had threatened to bury us, the Doomsday clock was ticking. The Soviets were the bad guys: the KGB, Stalin. We read Animal Farm and made posters comparing each animal to its Russian counterpart and then we compared the characters to Nazi Germany and we shuddered at the evil that was across the ocean, its finger on a button, waiting to play war games that would bring on nuclear winter. Ronald Reagan was president. U2 had released War the year before. It would still be a year before Sting would write about the Russians loving their children too.

Over Christmas break, I assigned my honors classes the novel. Last week, we began discussing it. I started off by asking someone to explain what communism was. Nobody raised a hand. Had anyone ever heard of the Berlin Wall?, I asked. Two hands went up. Great. "So, why was the Berlin Wall built?", I asked.

"For ....protection?", a kid guessed.
I kept fishing, "Protection from what......?"
Thirty students looked at me blankly. Finally, someone ventured a tentative hypothesis.
Invasion?

I was getting frustrated.

"You know," I told my students. "It wasn't that long ago that I was in high school." They quickly assured me that, actually, it was.

My students were all born after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They have no reference point for understanding communism. When I tried to explain it, one of them exclaimed that it sounded like a great system, because then there would not be any panhandlers.

It has been fascinating to hear my students discuss Animal Farm. They are writing papers right now, comparing a character from the novel to a historical or current political figure. I expected my students to stick to the Russian figures we have studied, or to talk about Hitler or perhaps Saddam Hussein. Instead, their comparisons have surprised me. One girl came to me after class to tell me that, she had been thinking about it, and she really thought there was a connection between Old Major and Martin Luther King Jr. Brilliant, I told her.

My students, on the whole, are much more sympathetic towards Old Major and Marx than my classmates and I were back when we read the novel during the Cold War. It has required me to do a lot of thinking on my feet, as their comments and questions have been so vastly different from the way we read the book in 1984. The communism aspect is pretty much lost on them, or it seems like a very, very good idea that was corrupted by an evil, greedy, capitalist pig. They have been quick to make modern parallels, and more often than not, their connections paint American politics is a very unfavorable light.

Last week, a student stayed for help outlining her paper. I asked who she was going to write about. Snowball, she said. Snowball, Old Major, and Boxer are my student's favorites, so I was not too surprised by her choice. I asked who she was going to compare Snowball too. Well, she said,I was thinking President Clinton.

I paused and rewound her answer in my mind. Trotsky-inspired Snowball to President Clinton?

I did what all teachers do when they are caught off guard; I stalled for time. Going to my desk, I retrieved a Venn Diagram. "If you are going to compare Clinton and Snowball, you will need to have at least three main similarities to talk about", I instructed. To be honest, I was not sure the essay was going to work. A few minutes later, I glanced over and saw her diagram rapidly filling up. Both Clinton and Snowball were likable, but the masses were easily swayed; both wanted a better life for the working class and had policies to improve their well-being; both were the subject of unfair persecution and were vilified by their political enemies.

"All right then", I said conceding her points. "It looks like that comparison is going to work."

According to my students, Napoleon is George Bush, Fox Five News is Squealer, and Bill Clinton is Snowball. The totalitarian dictatorship is America, and the dogs are in the ghetto, keeping the proletariat in line. We are being wire-tapped and lied to, and their friends and brothers and cousins are fighting a war to make Napoleon and his piggy comrades rich and powerful.

"Why did we go to war?", they ask. They were only in fifth grade when the twin towers were hit. The order of events is fuzzy with the change from child to teenager, and feels a lifetime away. "At the time", I say, "the president said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

"Yeah, but what did that have to do with 9-11?". They want to know. They are not being snotty, or self-righteous. They wait for an answer, honestly thinking I might have one.

"Weapons of mass destruction means things like nuclear bombs", I say. They sigh. Nuclear Bombs. Yeah, right. Whatever. As if.

As if such things even exist.

I am a girl's basketball groupie. Considering the sheer size of my school (right around 2,000 students), I have taught a disproportionately large percentage of the girl's basketball team, including the every starter on the varsity team. I go to most of the varsity home games, wearing my red and black team sweatshirt.

Last semester, I also taught a number of girls on the ninth grade team, but because the ninth grade games are on Wednesday night (the same night my biological children had practice for the Christmas musical at church), I was never able to watch them play. Every week, my ninth grade players would ask me if I was coming to the game, and I kept promising that I would be there after Christmas.

One of the reasons that I try to attend my kids games is that not many people come to watch them play. Especially when the girls are playing. Parents have to work. There is no concept of school spirit in the city. School spirit is a luxury for athletic booster clubs to fund. Game day ribbons, and temporary tattoos, and cheerleader-painted banners in the hallway all come with a price, and that price is parents. The soccer moms and dads that spend their children's Saturdays at the ball field, who send their kids to cheerleading camp or basketball camp, and who spend fifteen years just waiting for the day that their kid will be playing or cheering on the local high school team so they can put their name and number on a sticker on the back of their SUV - those parents are the hidden source of school spirit. They are the ones that order the giant rolls of paper and paint; they put the ribbons and tattoos on their credit cards, and then they use the money they raise to buy more stuff and better uniforms and cushioned folding seats in school colors. They are the screamers in the stands. You take those things for granted until you notice that they are gone. It's only then that it occurs to you. Right. Somebody had to pay for all that.

On Wednesday, two teams were playing at the same time: ninth grade and JV girls. I have ninth grade students on both teams, so I watched the first part of the JV game in the main gym. On my way downstairs to the ninth grade game, I ran into one of the assistant principals. He warned me to stay upstairs and keep watching the JV game. "It's a massacre down there." I arrived towards the end of the second quarter. The score was forty-something to eight, but that was not the first thing I noticed. The first thing I noticed was that we were playing a bunch of white girls.

The bleachers were filled with the visiting team's parents. At the very edge of the stands, I saw two faculty members from my school, and I took a seat behind them. I glanced at the players on the bench for the visiting team. They took up two rows. Every single one of them was white. I leaned forward and whispered to my fellow teacher, "Are we playing a private school?" Of course we were. Of course. All the girls on the visiting team had long, flat-ironed smooth hair pulled up into identical ponytails in shades that varied from honey to caramel to chestnut. On a public school basketball team, this would have been impossible.

It took me a few minutes to process everything, then I started to get angry. Our team consisted of the five girls that were on the court and a handful of alternates. The private school team had enough alternates to play an entirely different team each period. Our team had one grandmother, a few classmates and three teachers in the stands. The private school girls had bleachers filled with mothers and fathers. The visiting team was taller, and thinner, and they were kicking our ass.

I kept looking at the parents in the stands. The mothers with their Louis Vuitton and Fendi bags, the father who kept taking phone calls on his Blackberry. I wondered what these parents did for a living. What jobs could they have that allowed them to attend middle-of-the-week, middle-of-the afternoon basketball games way on the other side of the city? What sort of jobs did they have that allowed them all that flexible time off plus paid enough to allow them to send their children to a school whose yearly tuition cost more than my graduate school? They kept calling out congratulations to their daughters for every single good shot or pass. I started to hate them.

With every basket, and foul, and free throw, I found myself getting more and more angry. I was mad at Victoria and Caitlin and Claire, with their long limbs, shiny, straight hair, and great shots. I started to tally up all the things these girls had that my students didn't. Every point bothered me. The fact that they had come down to my school with all their privileges and advantages, and proceeded to massacre my girls, it seemed wrong.

After the game, my players came over to hug me. They were sorry, they said. They were sorry they didn't win. I told them it was okay, that I was glad I got to see them play, that they had played well. I told them I was proud of them.

When I went home, my husband asked how the game was. I sat in my reading chair with my head in my hands and told him how awful it had been. I told him that I was a hater. I didn't want to be a hater, but I was a hater anyway. I hated those private school girls. I hated Victoria and Caitlin and Claire. I hated the fact that they probably drove home in a Lexus and went skiing over Christmas and that they would all score really high on the SAT. I hated them.

I started to cry. I don't want to be a hater, I said. Because I know that life is not easy for those girls. I know it is not easy to be a prep school girl, and I know they are under so much pressure to be smart, and thin, and beautiful, and to get the ball in the basket every time they shoot. I know they work harder at it than my kids do, that they are disciplined and driven, that they diet and worry and are mean to each other in the hallways. I know that, in many ways, it sucks to be Victoria and Caitlin and Claire, and their pain is no less valid or meaningful just because they come from a world of wealth and advantage.

In the end though, I also know that the private school girls will be winners. They will score higher, and go to better colleges, and drive nicer cars, and get better jobs, and make more money. Even though I know that life is not just about winning and losing and cars and houses and tax brackets and ivy league and basketball, even though I know that all that stuff, in the end, has nothing to do with happiness or meaning or peace, and even though I can logically play it all through in my mind and see the truth in that - just once, just once. I wanted my students to have a chance to play those girls and win.

I went back to school Monday, after a nice, long winter break. My school is on a 4X4 Block schedule, which means that classes only last one semester. As a result, I returned to all new classes and all new students. Due to a shortage of teachers, I accepted a .25 this semester, which means that I have agreed to teach a class during my planning period. Last semester, another teacher used my classroom during my break, so I never got very much work done. This way, I figured I could at least have my own room all day. I was told that this would be a tenth grade class, which was fine, because I've taught tenth grade before.

On Friday, my department head sent me an email saying that there was a chance that they would switch my tenth grade class to a class of ninth grade repeaters. All weekend, I checked my email, but there was no word about the potential switch. This made me nervous. It is hard to feel ready and prepared when you have no idea what class you will be teaching. My only consolation was that I like the curriculum for both ninth and tenth grade, so, whichever grade I ended up with was fine with me. I just wanted to know.

When I left Monday morning, I told my husband that I was just hoping for the best. When I came home, he asked how things went and I just shook my head. "As bad as you could imagine it could have been....", I said. "It was worse."

On Monday morning, my new class schedule had me listed as teaching tenth grade. We are not given lists of students; we have to pull up the lists in our computerized attendance program and print each class roster out manually. When I opened my attendance program, I had a tenth grade class. I was a little hesitant when I noticed that there were thirty two names on the list (the legal class limit), but I figured I could manage.

Still, I am aware that things are not always totally organized, so I checked my email twice a period just in case there were any last minute changes.

By the time fourth period rolled around, I felt confident that I was, in fact, going to be teaching tenth grade. The bell rang and a few tenth graders started to come in and find seats. Then, the teacher who used my room last semester rolled his cart in. I looked at him. "I have a class this period", I said. "Did they put you in this room?" They had. It was a fixable problem, but still a bit confusing. He stood in the hall and instructed his students to wait outside while he found a new classroom.

In the meantime, my class quickly filling up. In fact, there were so many students, I ran out of desks. The bell rang and I went to close the door, only to see a group of about twenty-five junior and senior boys walking towards my class. They were looking at me as if they had every intention of entering my class. I gave them my very best don't-even-think-about-it teacher look.

"Who sent you here?", I asked. They told me the teacher's name and then, one of them held out his schedule. Sure enough, my name was listed as the teacher. The class on the schedules was ninth grade Literature and Composition (for repeaters). The only difference was that my room number was not on the schedule. Since tenth graders had the correct room number, and were on my computer schedule, I sent the ninth grader repeaters back to the room they came from and told them a teacher should show up.

I took a deep breath, and closed the door. Over seventy students had been scheduled to be in my room. I, personally, had been scheduled to teach two different classes of thirty-two students each. At the same time. But, it seemed to be under control. I was beginning to pass out course materials to my tenth graders when there was a knock on the door.

It was my department head. She was there to tell me that, actually, I was supposed to be teaching the ninth grade repeaters. Since I was already teaching three ninth grade classes, it seemed like a good idea to keep me with ninth grade all day long to save on my prep time. The tenth graders were ushered out, and a room full of ninth grader repeaters was ushered in.

Of course, I had no syllabus printed. Also, I had no idea what or how I was going to teach them.

While it is true that I have taught ninth grade for years, I've always taught actual ninth graders. Most of them are in the vicinity of fifteen years old. This semester, I am teaching all ninth grade honors. All of the honors kids are fourteen and fifteen. Almost all of them are girls.

My repeater class is a totally different story. There are thirty two students on the roll, but I have yet to see more than twenty two at one time. The class is made up largely of juniors and seniors, most of them are at least eighteen, and they are almost all boys (or, more accurately, men). I've never taught ninth grade literature to men before.
,
Yesterday, when I called roll, two students that had been there ever day previously were absent. The guys sitting next to them announced that they had both been locked up the day before. I stopped.

"What do you mean, 'locked up'?", I asked. He held his arms in front of him, wrists together in invisible handcuffs, and started singing Akon's song. I sighed. "Will they be back anytime soon?", I asked.

I was told, probably not.

Clearly, what works in actual ninth grade is not going to work with my fourth period class.

by Tobi Tobias
Illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman
Copyright 1975 (I was five years old).



"Mommy said she'd quit if I quit. She wants me to quit sucking my thumb because I'm getting too big for such baby stuff, she says, and the dentist says my teeth might not come in straight if I keep sucking my thumb so much. Daddy and I want her to quit smoking because the doctor says it's terrible for you, and she does cough an awful lot - not to mention the hole she burned in the sofa and the ashes she keeps dropping on my baby brother's head when she's feeding him. So we made a deal. We'd quit together.



Notice, hippie mama is breastfeeding while she smokes:


At the end of the book, despite numerous attempts, hippie mama does not quit smoking and the daughter does not give up thumb sucking. They just decide to cut back, a little at a time.

And to think, just thirty years later, the powers that be have deemed it necessary to digitally remove the cigarette from the illustrator photo at the back of Goodnight Moon.

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I collect picture books. I've been collecting them for over fifteen years. In the past few years, I've started to pick up vintage books from the 1970's - the type of picture books that were around when I was a kid. Last week, I found what very well might be the most shockingly outdated picture book that has ever been published. I'll post the first page tomorrow. Until then, the library card:

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Lily's Goals:

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