Chief Botherer

One of the mainstays of the American classroom is a bulletin board with “Classroom jobs” posted on it. Some sorry kids are assigned to clean the whiteboards; others to collect supplies at the end of the day. I even used to make them fill out applications. But lately, kids just hop to and help out regardless. So today was the first day in this school that I created a class job.

“Stop there,” I told the kid who’d been reading Caged Bird aloud, a child who draws a grin just by raising his hand, because you know whatever he says is going to be entertaining.

“You know the way I kept interrupting you, asking questions about the book?” He nodded.

“So, when you call on the next reader, you’re going to be the main person doing that to them, asking them questions, bothering them. You’re chief botherer,” I told him.

They passed the role around from one to the next, at one point seeking clarification: “Just because she’s the chief botherer, doesn’t mean we can’t also bother, right?”

I was scandalized. “Of course not! You are ALWAYS allowed to bother.”

I think my classroom is starting to more clearly reflect relevant 21^st century skills. While graduates may not have whiteboards in ten more years, they will certainly still have to know how to bother. And the Winnie-the-Pooh undertones make me happy, too. Oh, bother.

A student who loves math sent me this poem:

The Fibonacci sequence has always been my favorite math… thing…, ever since I did a report on it in high school (thank you to the wonderful math teacher who taught me that math class could involve reading! And writing!), and I was not less excited to discover it in poetry.

It will have to wait as a warm-up for my classes, however, as I think our next warm-up will be inspired by the way a mischievous kid started answering today’s question in somebody else’s notebook. I’m going to have them all switch notebooks and write as the person whose notebook they have. I’m still thinking about what the question should be. Maybe what that person thinks of them? Hmm.

I joined the art class for their trip to the Tel Aviv art museum yesterday. Predictably, we had a lot of discussions about what art is. The curator showed us an exceedingly banal exhibit of photographs of flowers on tables. They were each recreations of the flower arrangements from photos of famous treaties. While cool history, it didn’t seem to suffice as art. Most of my kids thought so, and I quoted Oscar Wilde a lot.

Next, we explored a photorealism exhibit in which the artist had hidden tiny Easter eggs in the midst of intricate pencil drawings of nature and the city. One was of a building I’d passed on my way to the museum, and in the reflection of the window we noticed monsters, tombstones, and funny faces. The kids had actually met the artist, so they were excited to drag me around and point out all the cool stuff he’d told them.

At the end of the tour, we went to an exhibit on African-Israeli art, reflecting the African diaspora in Tel Aviv. There was one very cool short film that we arrived at halfway. At the end, the kids turned to me and said they had no idea what it was about.

“It’s a post-apocalyptic world," I explained. "Humanity has set off nuclear bombs, because we elected Trump and he’s going to start WWIII, and the soil is filled with radioactivity, so people fled underground, and now the political authorities have a vested interest in keeping people there. That’s why she got dragged out of the room by guards when she found the soil in the jar was arable.”

“What? No, Ms., that can’t be right.” They looked confused. Just then, the movie started again. Text across the bottom read: “Earth: Thirty years after World War III.” The kids turned to me in disbelief. “How did you know?” One protested, “but the film was made before Trump!”

I managed to convince them that while context clues are important, and reading lots can make you smart, they shouldn’t believe everything I say about Trump.

A kid came back from vacation with the obligatory Christmas present teacher mug, and while I’ve received a lot of mugs over the course of my teaching tenure, I’ve never received one I like quite so much. Here’s to many hours of reading and tea, for all my fellow lit-lovers.