No matter how difficult the past, you can always begin again today. ~ Buddha’s Little Instruction Book.
Wednesday morning I got up and had a good cry over my failed marriage, and then I got dressed and went to work. I hadn’t been in the classroom for five days, but it felt like five weeks. I’d been relieved to open Buddha’s Little Instruction Book and read about beginning again. That’s exactly what I was doing – starting my life over.
My first class to teach was second grade reading, and when I walked into the room my co-teacher was nowhere to be found. The students said she was next door with Ms. Garza, and I could tell by the escalating hum of young voices and the fidgetiness of their bodies that I’d better fill the gap quickly or else mayhem would ensue. (Ten seconds with nothing to do is all it takes for a band of otherwise well-behaved second graders to render themselves unruly.)
Following exceedingly well-written lesson plans is my forte; impromptu, off-the-cuff teaching is not. I’d been so absorbed in the details of my divorce that I had lately left all the planning to my co-teachers and was especially out of the loop and underprepared. Add to that it is the middle of the school year, and winter – a time when many days it feels like I have to coerce using extreme force to get most students to learn anything at all.
I was unfamiliar with the story of the week, so I opened by saying, “Bring me up to date – I haven’t had a chance to read ‘Charlie Anderson’ yet.” Students began sharing information, calling out bits and pieces about the main characters. When one little boy began re-telling the entire story in sequence, I said, “Wait, wait! Don’t give away the plot! I still want to read it and I want to be surprised.”
I could tell by the looks on their faces that they were stumped. “Who knows what I mean when I say ‘Don’t give away the plot’?” Silence. “Does anybody know what ‘plot’ is?” Nothing. Aha! I thought to myself. You have your mini-lesson!
“Plot is basically everything in the story that matters. Think about movies. If your friend went to see Madagascar before you and then told you everything that happened in the story, wouldn’t that ruin it for you?” Lots of heads began to nod. “So let’s say I saw a movie that you want to see. Somebody, tell me your favorite movie –“
“Star Wars!” Matthew yelled from his desk.
“Perfect,” I said. “So if I wanted to tell you something about Star Wars without giving away the plot, I’d mention Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker and Han Solo living on a planet far, far away where a terrible war was going on. But I wouldn’t tell you that Darth Vadar was actually Luke’s father, because that would give away the whole plot, right?”
I looked at Matthew, who was staring at me in astonishment. I feared, for a moment, that in fact he had never seen Star Wars, and that I’d just given away the whole plot. But no, it turned out he owned the boxed set, and had used it as an example expecting to stump me. “How do you know so much about Star Wars?” he asked, indignant.
After briefly discussing my own personal history (“It may surprise you to learn that Star Wars dates back to the Dark Ages, when I was a little girl. In fact, I saw it six times in one summer!”), and without much bullying, I managed to get the students to bring me up to speed on “Charlie Anderson.” (Without giving away the plot.) And I noticed something important. I was starting out fresh with my second graders, too. They were interested in me in a way they hadn’t been before. Something about it said "We still might not know much about plot but Ms. McQueen, with her ease at tossing around words like C3PO, Chewbacca and Jar Jar Binks, MIGHT actually have something to teach us yet."
Wednesday morning I got up and had a good cry over my failed marriage, and then I got dressed and went to work. I hadn’t been in the classroom for five days, but it felt like five weeks. I’d been relieved to open Buddha’s Little Instruction Book and read about beginning again. That’s exactly what I was doing – starting my life over.
My first class to teach was second grade reading, and when I walked into the room my co-teacher was nowhere to be found. The students said she was next door with Ms. Garza, and I could tell by the escalating hum of young voices and the fidgetiness of their bodies that I’d better fill the gap quickly or else mayhem would ensue. (Ten seconds with nothing to do is all it takes for a band of otherwise well-behaved second graders to render themselves unruly.)
Following exceedingly well-written lesson plans is my forte; impromptu, off-the-cuff teaching is not. I’d been so absorbed in the details of my divorce that I had lately left all the planning to my co-teachers and was especially out of the loop and underprepared. Add to that it is the middle of the school year, and winter – a time when many days it feels like I have to coerce using extreme force to get most students to learn anything at all.
I was unfamiliar with the story of the week, so I opened by saying, “Bring me up to date – I haven’t had a chance to read ‘Charlie Anderson’ yet.” Students began sharing information, calling out bits and pieces about the main characters. When one little boy began re-telling the entire story in sequence, I said, “Wait, wait! Don’t give away the plot! I still want to read it and I want to be surprised.”I could tell by the looks on their faces that they were stumped. “Who knows what I mean when I say ‘Don’t give away the plot’?” Silence. “Does anybody know what ‘plot’ is?” Nothing. Aha! I thought to myself. You have your mini-lesson!
“Plot is basically everything in the story that matters. Think about movies. If your friend went to see Madagascar before you and then told you everything that happened in the story, wouldn’t that ruin it for you?” Lots of heads began to nod. “So let’s say I saw a movie that you want to see. Somebody, tell me your favorite movie –“
“Star Wars!” Matthew yelled from his desk.“Perfect,” I said. “So if I wanted to tell you something about Star Wars without giving away the plot, I’d mention Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker and Han Solo living on a planet far, far away where a terrible war was going on. But I wouldn’t tell you that Darth Vadar was actually Luke’s father, because that would give away the whole plot, right?”
I looked at Matthew, who was staring at me in astonishment. I feared, for a moment, that in fact he had never seen Star Wars, and that I’d just given away the whole plot. But no, it turned out he owned the boxed set, and had used it as an example expecting to stump me. “How do you know so much about Star Wars?” he asked, indignant.
After briefly discussing my own personal history (“It may surprise you to learn that Star Wars dates back to the Dark Ages, when I was a little girl. In fact, I saw it six times in one summer!”), and without much bullying, I managed to get the students to bring me up to speed on “Charlie Anderson.” (Without giving away the plot.) And I noticed something important. I was starting out fresh with my second graders, too. They were interested in me in a way they hadn’t been before. Something about it said "We still might not know much about plot but Ms. McQueen, with her ease at tossing around words like C3PO, Chewbacca and Jar Jar Binks, MIGHT actually have something to teach us yet." (P.S. It's not just me, right? Yoda and 
Buddha seem to have an awful lot in common ...)
Buddha seem to have an awful lot in common ...)
1 comment:
I was also obsessed with Star Wars. As a 5 year old, I saw the movie 6 times in the movie theatre! It is the only movie that I have seen multiple times in the theatre!!
Post a Comment