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| One of my classes with the mystery books they were reading. |
A
few weeks ago I was at a graduation party when a friend of my sister-in-law,
came up to talk
to us. She’d been a high school English teacher for years and now that she’s retired
from that position, she’s teaching English and writing to adult students in a
vocational school. We started talking about the problem with writing today. Teachers
are complaining that teaching to the test is eliminating time needed to teach
writing. Now it’s mostly filling in the blanks. We’ve both read research that
writing with a pen or pencil works to stimulate the brain more than typing
something into a computer. She also mentioned one teacher, who was required to
teach using a computer with the students all on their individual lap tops –
gifts from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation perhaps. The teacher was
frustrated because she could not stand in front of the classroom reading the
students faces to know who understands what she’s covering and who doesn’t. We
both agreed that the push for more and more tests is not only frustrating for
teachers, but also hurting the students. Much as I loved teaching, excessive
testing is one of the reasons I’m glad I’m not teaching anymore.
Sounding
like an old foggie, saying back in the day when I was teaching, at least until
the last two years when we consolidated into a large school and started
changing classes, I was in a small school with only two third grade teachers
and we were self-contained. Yes, I taught my students what they needed at that
grade level, but I had the freedom to use my imagination to make the subjects
fun and interesting. Much of that was done through reading and writing. I gave
each student a note book for a journal the first day, and every day after
lunch, recess, and listening to a chapter from the book I read at that time,
they wrote the date in their journal and started with Dear Mrs. Alden.
Sometimes I gave them a prompt and sometimes it was free writing. Every evening
I read those journals and replied to what they wrote. I also had an early
morning book, a mid-morning book going along with one of the themes we were
covering after our sustained silent reading time and I had sets of easy chapter
books on the themes we were studying so we could sit in a circle and take turns
reading a chapter each day. The MagicTree House series was very popular as was
The Time Warp Trio series.
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| Xyl measuring his worm in one of the activities with worms. |
They
wrote stories; about the earthworms they studied, for instance, but the ones
that continued with one character all year were Rocky stories. I brought in a
rock that sort of had a face on it enhanced with a black marker where the eye
would be. Telling one of my fabrications, I told them I’d heard a voice the
night before and looked around until a rock announced it was him. From then on
they wrote stories about Rocky in dinosaur time, Rocky in caveman times, with
the Egyptians, and in the Middle-Ages. He came over on the Mayflower and
eventually came to Hiram, Ohio on a covered wagon.
They
wrote poetry and plays, too. They acted out the plays and were so funny. They
also wrote research papers. I had three sets of encyclopedias and I went to
libraries and brought in piles of books including many of my own on the subject
we were studying; Dinosaurs, Insects, arachnids, Ancient Egypt, the
Middle-Ages, biographies of famous people, Native Americans, etc. Believe me,
writing research papers in third grade was a big challenge for them as well as
for me. They also made projects to go along with the paper; posters, dioramas,
etc. Some parents weren’t very happy with me, usually when their kid didn’t
tell them about it until the night before it was due, but most supported what I
was doing.
Probably
the most challenging and fun writing project was what turned into a book for
me. I'd heard about a writing prompt in a summer class I’d taken about
bringing in a suitcase filled with stuff and have the students write about the
kind of person who would have those things in it. It was geared for upper
elementary or middle school. It was a one day writing lesson that I extended it to
an eight month writing project.
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| I'm opening the suitcase to examine contents. |
On
the day I brought in an old suitcase filled with odds and ends of clothes,
books, etc. I told the students I’d found it on my back steps. They were excited.
In small groups of four they came up to examine what was in there. Since I had
a Sherlock Holmes Detective Club in which they read third grade level mysteries
with a partner and in their detective notebooks were to write down clues, etc.,
they got magnifying glasses and checked things out. Then we discussed what
they’d learned from what was in the suitcase. They were curious about a feather
and also a lottery ticket. They read a letter to Alice (written in pencil so I
erased my name and put in Alice) from her niece, Emily.
Since
they figured out the woman must be named Alice, I told them I’d put an ad in
the lost and found column in my newspaper. We got three letters (thanks to a
friend, a cousin and a sister), but only one could be the owner – Alice Van
Brocken. After the suitcase had been returned to her, she wrote them a thank
you note and said she was heading for Columbus, Ohio on the trail of two jewel
thieves she’d witnessed using a falcon to fly into a window and steal a diamond
necklace in Cleveland. Since she was older, the police didn’t believe her so
she was going to bring them to justice herself.
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| Students displaying some of the things in the suitcase. |
The
students wrote back to her telling them about themselves and giving her advice.
This started in October and continued through the school year. Alice got into
all sorts of dangerous situations starting with being mugged by the two thieves
and locked in a warehouse for three weeks with the falcon and three huge
cartons of canned spinach and a can opener. When the thieves took the falcon,
she knew they wouldn’t be back and managed to escape through a vent, found a
clue and headed for Boston.
Alice
traveled around the country getting into dangerous situations. She knew karate
and that helped her sometimes. The kids sent her letters (supposedly to a
neighbor who forwarded them) and those letters were precious and funny. (Excerpt
from one: I imagine you’re sort of like
my grandma; nice, giving, friendly and old, but don’t have a lot of old
problems like having too much gas.) They worried about her and gave her
advice and some even suggested she give it up and come home. Thanks to family
and friends scattered all over the country, Alice sent them letters telling
about her escapades and narrow escapes and these letters came postmarked and
unopened so they never seemed to doubt that Alice wasn’t real after the letter
from Columbus, Ohio came. They followed her on the map and guessed which state
she’d be in next.
The
last week of school, there was a knock on the door and I told Brandon to open
it. He did and stepped back and said, “Oh, my God! It’s Alice!” And in swooped
Alice dressed in a full cotton skirt and wearing a sun hat. I told my sister –
more than twenty years younger than Alice – that they’d want to see some karate
and she was to tell them she’d injured her back in the process of capturing the
thieves at the Space Needle in Seattle. She told me not to worry about it, but
when one little boy asked, she went into a lengthy spiel about how it was a
discipline and not done for entertainment. Then all of a sudden she let out a
shout that sounded like a karate shout and kicked out to the side at the same
time she moved her arms in what looked like a karate chop. The full skirt hid
that it wasn’t a full karate kick. That day the kids didn’t want to go out for
last recess before the buses came. They all lined up to get her autograph
instead.
Okay,
I lied to these kids, but I gave them something exciting to think about and
they learned to write letters. I did this twice; seven years apart when I knew
there weren’t any younger siblings of the first group. I saved their letters
and Alice’s and narrowing it down to six boys and six girls and changing the
names slightly, I wrote The Sherlock
Holmes Detective Club. I had specific students in mind from my second group
and mostly used their letters, but if they were absent that day or didn’t write
much, I’d substitute one from the earlier class. I corrected spelling and
grammar, but other than that, their letters are as they wrote them. I also used
one of my students, a girl who continued to write to me until her senior year
in high school, as a narrator for each of the student chapters. I gave her
Rocky when I retired. When I met her a few weeks ago, she told me she’d taken
him to Vassar with her and kept on her dresser there.
H.L.
Mencken said, “The best teacher of
children, in brief, is one who is essentially childlike.” I’m not sure I’ve
ever completely grown out of childhood, and it’s why I chose elementary
education over high school or college. Maybe that’s why my students and I had
so much fun.
Do
you think I was right to lie to my students for the whole year?
Have
you ever kept the truth from a child?
