April 14, 2011
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"I was going to look for my missing watch, but I could never find the time."
---Derek, AZThe Daily News
1 Thank you, Derek from Arizona. A Z you have a sense of humor. Question: How come milk cartons open easily, but if you buy chocolate milk, you wind up ripping the corners off the thing AND you never do the logical thing and pour it into a pitcher?
2 And it isn't like you weren't warned as a kid at school. They used to give us those little training-wheel chocolate milk cartons at lunch, and even then I couldn't manage to "push up" the carton to get it open.
3 I would usually tear it to shreds and then try to open the other side, which never worked.
4 Absolute Truth.
5 Moving on, Part the First: Yesterday I did a Socratic Seminar with my students. To enter into the Portal of Wisdom, my students need to come up with four famous quotations. It's way too deep into the evening for me to remember any, but it is a fun little thing I do before we go into discussions about life, or any sort of knowledge.
6 I have a very special skeleton key that I use to assist us into entering the realm of infinite wisdom. We cannot enter until four quotations are shared. It's the Law. Why four quotations? Because if you have four quotes you have a gallon. Okay I'll stop.
7 Once in, we discuss philosophy, wisdom, and the need for the WPC, who visit us almost once a year. What is the WPC?
8 White People with Clipboards.
9 Nobody knows who they are, but evidently they chart our course.
10 They came in yesterday and never came into my room, even though I had two chairs ready set for them.
11 I still chatted with them, and proffered them invisible apples.
12 But I digress.
13 When my students are in the Socratic Seminars, music plays, and wisdom dances gracefully across the room.
14 It is the time that students teach one another in groups, and laugh and goof off while learning at the same time.
15 I put on some Curious George songs about sharing, and move in and out of their groups. They argue about things completely unrelated to the lesson, but they also debate about things like whether God exists, or why flatulence?
16 It's pretty deep.
17 Everything is timed at precise five-minute intervals, complete with countdowns to discussion.
18 It's pretty fun, and it's pretty fun. The discussions permeate the room as each discussion takes on its own pace. Every five minutes I'll have them enter into a different discussion and share with the class, who are also allowed to debate if needed. In the end, thought happens, and quite often, learning.
19 Before allowing them to leave the Portal of Wisdom and move on to their next class, they must share Absolute Truth.
20 An Absolute Truth is something like this: "If you are in a supermarket, and you are in a line that doesn't move, AND if you lose patience and move to another line, the line you left will always move faster than the line you moved to."
21 And yes, I do end the sentence with a proposition.
22 The students then must chime in with as many Absolute Truths as they can before the end of the period, usually about a minute or two.
23 "If you wear warm clothes, the sun will bake you later in the day."
24 "If you forget an umbrella, it's sure to rain."
25 "If you try to use an umbrella in rain that has fierce winds, it is sure to turn inside out, but you'll still try to use it even though it is bent, torn and useless."
26 "If it clears up, you WILL forget your umbrella."
27 "The more you have to go to the bathroom, the better chance you have of not noticing that the toilet paper roll has been exhausted."
28 "Nobody will ever eat the last piece of pizza, so it might as well be you."
29 "If you open a carton of milk, it will work every time. If you open a carton of chocolate milk, you will rip the top into wet, chocolate paper." And so on.
30 Wise bunch of birds.
31 Moving on, Part the Second: Oy.
32 Fun stuff.
33 Well, yesterday was supposed to be one of my most stressful days of the year. I had been told that the WPC was going to pay my class a visit, so I was pretty tense. I planned this little forty-minute lesson for three weeks, pushing all my other plans to the wayside.
34 I was told that they were to visit three or four teachers only, and that the entire future of the school hung in the balance.
35 They were particularly interested in "support" classes, which is a euphemism for students who need a little more support. It is stated nicely, and is actually a fairly accurate description.
36 In my own situation, my support class is actually a nice bunch of students, but many have an attention span of about one second. They would cop to this. They can think, but often in what Vonnegut would call "short bursts".
37 So the WPC was to pay that class a visit, and from what I was told, the entire future of our school was at stake.
38 No pressure, as I said yesterday.
39 Well, my support class came and went, and experienced a huge no-show.
40 Ironically, they produced better than all my honors classes put together. It was a simple lesson, where I gave them a paragraph consisting of two sentences and had them add sight, then sound, then smell, etc.
41 It was two sentences about a couple walking towards the sunset at the beach.
42 When they started adding pink and lavender hues, and children playing in the sand, they lit up, and they shared their work with the rest of the class.
43 It didn't matter to them that the WPC never showed. They stood proud of their work, and THEY came up with Absolute Truths before they had to leave.
44 "If you put your boyfriend's name on a Tat, he'll cheat on you the next day."
45 Baby steps.
46 Absolute Truth.
47 Anyway, that's about if for today.
48 If you can think of any Absolute Truths, be sure to send them my way.
49 Have a great day.
50 Peace.
~H~www.xanga.com/bharrington
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