Thursday, Sept. 23, 2004
School daze, posted at 4:22 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com It's amazing to me how when the whole class comes up and puts their tests in one pile and their responses in another, how there's always the kid who insists on handing me his papers instead of just following suit and putting it in the stacks.**
Our office got a new copier machine today and I've been looking at it from the hallway all day as if it has one of those little beams from heaven coming down on it. Two men, completely unannounced, just came in, disassembled the old one in five minuts, and returned with the new one. It's really quite amazing; I'm not sure how it happened. I feel like someone, somewhere, is going to realize their mistake and take it away from us.
**
I have some really bright kids this year. I posed the question to them if A Lesson Before Dying would have been different different if Jefferson were actually guilty of the crime in the liquor store. It's an intriguing question, if I don't say so myself... really, most of the book is about his (and Grant's redemption), and that wouldn't necessarily be affected by guilt. But one of the reasons why the reader feels for Jefferson is his innocence, so it would detract from that. Anyhow, I had kids who argued both sides, using such arguments as, "Well, if he were guilty, the book becomes an anti-capital punishment novel, a social criticism. It completely changes what Gaines set out to do." Wow. I just sat back, amazed that it was coming out of a ninth grader. I also heard phrases like "Jefferson's aura of innocence would have decreased" and "Grant would have had to have been all the more powerful if he had actually been guilty, because then the redemption would have become much more than just being called a hog." Anyhow, it was really neat, and I thought about the book in a different way.
**
So I teach a mix of mostly black kids, but I have a few Jewish kids as well. Today, in our Socratic circle, I had one group of kids discussing in the middle, and one group of kids analyzing on the outside. When we came to the feedback portion, one Jewish kid told a black girl who had done a particularly good job at asking specific questions about the novel of her classmates, "Mozzletoff to Lystra, who had 13 questions, most of them directed right at the text." Mozzletoff. I don't even know if I spelled that right.
**
I am so tired right now. Five kids remain in my room and it's almost 5pm. I will be pouring beer at Kiss Cafe at 7pm-8pm. Woohoo.
PS: I know now that it's spelled Mazel Tov. Actually, I don't even know if that's quite right. But I'm leaving the misspelling in there intentionally.