A Classroom

When I stepped into the room
Last century

The paint was beige, I think, and peeling

And the coat underneath was puke green.

I spent some time in room 007

(the coolest room number ever)

Seventeen years.

About 2 years in, frustrated by the puke green and the peeling,

I painted the walls

Two tones of blue, light and a little darker,

Textured together.

That sort of thing was encouraged then.

It stood out when you walked past the other beige rooms

And then looked in my windows.

One room

Four walls

Varying numbers of

Books, desks, students

And an entire forest of paper, I suspect.

Chalk boards gave way to whiteboards

Overhead transparencies gave way to a projector.

A big desktop computer gave way to… a big laptop.

What happened in this room?

What did it witness?

Lessons, like

The teacher was angry.

Versus -

The teacher slammed a dictionary to the floor, tipped over a stool, threw an eraser,

And yelled “I’m not going to take this any more!”

After their shock wore off,

They always remembered that showing

Is better than telling.

Genre Jumpers:

Proofreading taught through the tale

Of Ben Blast and Tracy Tracker

Riding through books

To stop the Grammar-nator

Who wreaks havoc with mistakes

That kill people.

Students reading.

The rise of Harry Potter,

The fleeting fad of Twilight,

The miserable reign of Lemony Snickett.

Students reading their own books,

Happy in the silence and immersed in words so far

They forgot they were words at all.

Shared stories:

The girl with the lost slipper, the girl with the red cape,

The boy and the cow, the girl with the really long hair.

Laurie and that lost sneaker

Anvil and Tucker and the apple tree

And that white circle I thought was yellow

Charlie and Algernon

And Jonas and Montag, both looking around, waking up,

And hitting the road.

Making My Escape,

And the teacher explaining the story of how he came to write it.

Students asking their own questions about all of them

Rather than answer mine

Or the textbook’s.

Students writing:

Their enthusiasms and frustrations

Their real stories and the stories they dreamed up

I made a mad dash to get to class on time

The room was a mess

Ben Bunny and Fred Fox

Describe this suspect for the police artist across the room

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.

The Right Words at the Right Time

This I Believe

Group novels

Mocking the five paragraph essay

And formulas of all kinds

“A paragraph has five sentences!”

No.

Whatever you want to write about is fine!

Stop asking “Can I…?”

Strange goings on:

Playing a murder mystery game

Called Killer,

My students winking at each other

And laying on the floor after their dramatic death scenes.

Leaving the room with planks of wood and logs

To play a survival game outside

And coming back in to write about it

Any way you want

A spy mission to building 8

To steal the laptop cart back from Mr. Copes

Darting from column to column

Dashing around corners.

And sitting at my desk at planning

To hear an announcement that a plane had hit

A building in New York.

Despite events like

Finally landing on the comics page

Publishing a novel

Winning Teacher of the Year

Or perhaps because of them

When workbooks and maps and fidelity came to town

And I spoke up

Only to have my hand slapped

I went into a tailspin

Had a heart attack scare at my desk over lunch

But kept teaching till the end of the day.

And then I figured out

That being the good kid isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

That there are times to speak up

As the bumper sticker says

Even if your voice shakes.

I learned to think bigger

Step back further

Collaborate with my students

Rather than setting us up as adversaries from day one.

When I entered the room, my kids were 3 and 4.

They both passed through my class for three years.

As I am leaving this room,

They are now in college.

And I’ve had grand-students in this class.

But now I’ve packed up my 27 boxes

Of books and posters and knickknacks

A shelf, roley chair, and a table, and emptied the room.

And I packed them up to drive away,

I took one last look in the window.

A guy was in there

Painting it beige.

Probably for the best,

I suppose.

But I can’t help feeling

That they want to paint us all beige

In the name of Fidelity

Time to create a new space.