Outsiders Insider

I am starting out the year by dazzling my 14-year old students with the wonders of small town gang warfare. Specifically, warfare of the male, teenage variety. In this mileu, bravery is being on the large side of a four-against-one confrontation. Hey, it is easy to be brave when the victim of your agression is smaller and younger. I am describing the action in chapter 1 of The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton.

The question I ask myself is this: Why doesn't anyone in class ever point this out? Possible answer: middle school students prefer the titilation bullying produces. Laughs. Wiggle-in-your-seat excitement.

If this violence stuff, the bullying, bothers me, why do I teach this novel? I teach it because the victim of early bullying grows, learns, becomes empathetic, and eventually overcomes the petty forces of cowardace. Hip hip hooray!

Besides, the novel if full of beautiful language, imagery, and goofy 1960's slang. Gotta love that.

Am I Obsolete? Am I a Failure?

Man, oh man. I am feeling the pressure of being a public school teacher.

My students walk in the door, and I must accept them as they are. Happy and smart, or not happy and not too smart. Motivated and supported by family, or not motivated and not supported by family.

The California testing data from my last year students is in and available for all to see on the internet. What a shock to see that many of their scores actually went down from the year before. Bunches of "my" kids slipped, for example, from BASIC to BELOW BASIC. Or from PROFICIENT to BASIC. My reaction?

CRAP!

If I were working at another sort of job and "my numbers" declined, I would be FIRED!

This worries me. Truly.

Ms. Baumann is back in P2-1

Summer is over. I'm back in the classroom, directing traffic. "Focus, please," is my primary utterance. My students seem very happy for some strange reason. Perhaps they are simply excited to be in such close proximity to each other. It is pretty stimulating, I must say. We are reading The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton. The protagonist gets beat up in the very first chapter. It's a hit.

Tahiti Tiki

It is truly a vacation when you just unpack ONE TIME and head straight for the pool. Ed and I spent eight heavenly days on Moorea at the Pearl Resort and Spa. Funny, but everything, and I mean everything, looks just like the tourist brochures. Love that, actually.

Our activities:

--bicycle ride around the entire island

--scuba (again and again)

--watching a humpback whale lounge around the turquoise sea

--hiking to a lookout point from which you can see two peaks and two pristine bays

--lots of nothin'

Loved every minute.