Show Them The World!!

PARIS

Taking a group of young kids who have NEVER left the country and showing them Europe for their first time was one of the most satisfying experiences of my life!! This was an amazing group. Seriously, other teachers were running into problems and issues with their kids and mine were all complete angels (as far as I know) and more than that, they were completely fun to hang out with. They had me laughing and on the go for the entire trip!!
Here they are in the Louvre. They got my own special tour that I used to give to visitors when I lived there so long ago! It was so much fun to run amuck through this ancient palace with them!!

Always camera ready, here are some of the kids in the group, I had 15 total!
We were on a boat tour of Paris just in time to see the Eiffel Tower light up. It's hard to believe that it is right outside my window as I type this. Life is TOO good to me!

We all put in such LONG days and averaged about 10 miles a day of walking (according to my high tech pedometer!) As soon as we got into the bus each night to go back to our hotel rooms the kids just zonked out!

MILAN
Within five minutes of being in Italy I had a gelato in my hand...how life is supposed to be. Once the kids saw that it was totally ok to eat gelato five or six times a day, they were totally on board!!
Outside the beautiful and famous Scala Opera house there was a huge demonstration for the Arts. In Italy, like America, many art programs are being cut from school curriculum and these ballerinas and opera singers were showing the beauty of their craft.
This couple was amazing, doing a whole ballet for us!
Of course the hot Italian police were nearby to stop any madness that might happen. The Italians are a people known for their passion!!
Lunch time! We filled an entire sidewalk cafe!

FLORENCE
The beautiful duomo, it's been about 11 years since I climbed this tower with Holly long ago!
My favorite statue in Italy (and probably the world)
When the girls and I got tired we sat on the steps and then rated Italian men. Is was the best pasttime EVER!! We found a 9.5, if he had been a few inches taller I would have given him a ten, but you can't have it all. Although, I must say that Italian men DO know how to dress!

PISA
It really leans, in case you were wondering.

TUSCANY
Doing her laundry on a sultry day.
I got three scoops of gelato here and it was THE best I have EVER had, they deserved their title!
I did spend a pretty penny on one souvenir for me, I usually get one nice one per trip. I got a set of three handmade vases from this little pottery shop tucked away in a high corner of the little Tuscan village. She is SO talented!

ROME
I've got Italian blood. I really do.
One of the best moments with my kids...reinacting the assassination of Julius Caesar with them on the very place that it actually happened. I taught each of these kids this play during their 10th grade year and how amazing to actually go and witness first hand the old ruins of the Roman Forum!! (I was Caesar, just about to get it!)
Eating gelato, yet again, on the Spanish Steps in Roma!

VENICE
The never ending arches of San Marco Square




And my final act in Italy? I put a wish on Yoko Ono's wishing tree in the gardens of Peggy Guggenheim. This was one of my favorite days in Europe. I would highly suggest visiting Peggy's collection!

Learn Anything!

If you could research ANYTHING. What would you choose? My student have been getting a research paper (and extensive 8-15 page paper) together for the past two months. I let them choose ANYTHING (within reason and school appropriateness). I call it their Inquiry Report.

I get such a thrill looking through the topics to see what they chose. I think it gives us a good inside into the teenage brain. Also, I feel like I learn SO much about so many things when I read through them over the next week because they kids REALLY do their research. They make each topic fascinating!!

I love my job. Have I mentioned that before?

Here you go, (remember, we're a Math, Engineering and Science based school):

Gordon More Founder of Intel

Dedecahedron

The Evolution of Computers

Hayao Miyazaki: His Life and Works

Bob Marley and the Wailers (every year I always get a Bob Marley paper, never fails!)

The Power of Nuclear Reactions

Harry Potter Movies

Child Soldiers

The Silk Road

The Grimm Brothers

Electric Cars

The Bell Jar: A Woman's Story of Depression

Darfur

Archery in the Middle Ages

Albert Einstein (he's a regular too!)

Harrison Ford (he's a new one!)

The Works and Achievements of Ozzy Osbourne

CHEESE

Sushi

The Hulk Comics

Salem Witch Trials

Plastic Surgery

Cows (? Really, ANYTHING in the WORLD and I get a paper on Cows?)

Walt Disney

Mummies and How They Have Affected Our World

The Solar System

Tyra Banks (again, REALLY?)

Jim Jones: The Face of Evil

Terrifying Realities: the truth about drug trafficking

What would YOU like to know more about??

To the Media

From a letter written by a young girl in 3rd Period....


To the Media,

Why do you steal away my identity? Isn't it hard enough for me to figure out who I am without all of your messages? You say: You are fat, you need to be skinnier. You aren't pretty enough. You need to get a facial and wear make-up all the time to be pretty. You are ugly. You're not important because you aren't famous. You're only ONE person' you can't do or change anything. You need to be rich and buy a lot of new stuff to matter. You're only a girl, you can't do anything. You're too fragile and weak to do anything; you're just a dumb blonde. You're too smart. You're too dumb. You don't matter.

I want to know who I am, what my special talents are. I want to know what I can do to help others. I want to know more about myself, even random things. I want to know if I really like to be funny, or if I just do it to fit in. I want to know everything I can about myself. Why does everything, especially the media, make it so hard to do that.

Who am I?





So, what do YOU want to know about YOURSELF?

Unexpected Thank You...

I got a thank you email from a student I had over two years ago....and let me tell you, it was awesome. Have you thanked anyone today?

Ms. B! thank you so much. You are the most amazing teacher. I just want you to know that you are the reason I even know that I can act, and that I like it. So thank you, you pushed me to do a lot of things that I wasn't sure that I was good at, you gave me confidence and encouraged me to follow my dreams. If I was to name a teacher that has done the most for me in my life, I would definitely say you:) so, know that and thank you. 

My Name

One of the creative writing assignments involved the kids writing about their names. I told them to compare them to numbers, to sounds, to people, to their ethnicity, to colors, to moments, and finally, if they had to choose a NEW name for themselves, what would it be?

Here is one of my favorites thus far....

My name is Megan, my middle name is Alice, so even though Megan boars me; Alice is no fall back name. It appears my mother had a fondness for Meg. Meg of all words! Three letters, no meaning. Megan, sometimes spelled with an H. 

It's plain, blah; it's a pale face with a few freckles. It's a girl who does her work and gets straight As. It's a girl on time, with a planner. A girl with no idea what fornication is, a girl oblivious that there is another sex besides her own. Megan isn't a name you can tease. It's too simple. I don't ever answer to Megan unless it's shouted at me 4 to 5 times. 

If there is anyone worth my time they address me by Asian. It's my ethnicity, but it bubbles. So proud I am about being Asian, but it's not the reason I see myself as Asian. I got my name from Alex. He doesn't pay attention to much of anything, so by the 6th grade the only way to address me was "Asian". 

It could be for the fact that I was the only Asian in the entire school for three years. I smile at that fact. I am easily recognized as Asian on my face, but then in the 8th grade I was known as Asian by my laugh, my smile, and my smart aleck remarks. 

Asian: a small two year old with paint on her face and floor and walls and ceiling. 

Asian: pig tails and glow sticks. 

Asian: head banging and rock music. 

Asian, a nonstop smile, a giggly tummy, and a guilty conscious when consuming gummy bears. 

Asian: fierce with ninja stars and chopsticks. 

Asian: artsy with dragons and calligraphy. 

Asian: pointed out and up front and centered. 

Megan is a name to be written on paper. Megan is meant for teachers and distant family. Megan is meant for formal documents. Asian is for my friends, it's for my art, it's for my music, it's for my tantrums, it's for my air, and it's for my fire. 

Asian is me. Megan is just my Name.

Let me ask you, if you could rename YOURSELF, who would you be?

Book Banning 101

(Persepolis--the sad victim of the latest in Book Banning)

Banning Books. Does is still happen? You bet. Does it happen to me??? Um, yeah.

Another name for this post could be "Mormon Mother's in Utah hate my Liberal Guts" or "Please teach your children how to NOT ask questions and to be Sheep" or "I want my child to be Uniformed about the World, thank you."

Ok, I am being a bit cheeky, and I wasn't even going to do a post on this, but it continues to be in my life and it honestly is affecting me to the point where I have been considering a new profession. So, if I've been distant lately from you, my blogger friends, it's because I've been weighed down with some questions and sadness about the closemindedness of my fellow people.

My experience from book banning is as funny as a mother coming into my 8th grade classroom and getting angry that her son had borrowed a copy of  Captain Underpants from a friend of his. I really had to try and not laugh in her face, but in the end, she got the book removed from the library ( It's a tale of a cute, unlikely hero...but the mother never read the book, she just didn't like the word "underpants" ---{and yes, her kid used MUCH worse language than this in the hallways})....this is the type of personality, to me, who uses "special" words for body parts so kids grow up uncomfortable with their bodies.

The next year I had a few LDS mothers up in arms about teaching the kids The Witch of Blackbird Pond. I assume that they were upset because they believed the book taught about witches or witchcraft? I wasn't sure. And they weren't sure either, because they NEVER read it. For those of you who have read this AMAZING novel, it's the story of a young girl coming to Puritan America and because she is different, the town wants to condemn her as a witch. It is a beautiful book of religious tolerance and appreciating each other's differences. I LOVE this book. And I kept teaching it.

This year, I have a mother who is not very fond of me. This started when she saw that I put The Power of Myth on the reading list (as an OPTION!!!). Then, I introduced the Hero's Journey in the class, as a reference for character motivation and plot interpretation. She came in very upset. Of course, she was SO upset that she couldn't even vocalize it. She typed a two page rant about me, my course, the books I chose, and she asked me to read it, while she sat there and watched me. It was seriously awkward. I sat for five minutes and read nasty things about me and my teaching methods while she stood there shaking her head. Then I asked her, when I had finished, "Have you read this book?" 

And the universal answer...No. 

"What is your problem with this book?" 

"It teaches that Jesus Christ is a myth." 

I'm not even going to justify that with a response on my blog. She also wanted to know my religion ( I have found that being 31, single, and a Democrat in Mormon society has often dubbed me as an atheist lesbian...I am NOT being dramatic here!)...which I wouldn't tell her. Then she went on to question many things I did. 

I said to her, "If you are looking for a teacher who is going to sit at the front of the class, hand out work sheets and busy work and never cause a stir, then you are in the wrong place. I am not that teacher. I am a teacher who will get these kids to think, to question, to wonder, to value, to decide, to contribute. They start college next year ( I teach at an early college high school)...don't you think we should prepare them?" 

Most LDS moms I meet don't expect this from me. They expect me to be really sweet and fake and cheesy. They expect me to say "Oh, yes, whatever you say." They don't expect me to return rant for rant. But I do. And it usually comes back to haunt me. She gave me the evil eye and then left. She has now been monitoring every thing her son is asked to do and then reporting to the principal when she thinks it is not right. 

The myth puts you there all the time, gives you a line to connect with that mystery which you are.

Shakespeare said that art is a mirror held up to nature. And that’s what it is. The nature is your nature, and all of these wonderful poetic images of mythology are referring to something in you. When your mind is simply trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image.

The inner world is the world of your requirements and your energies and your structure and your possibilities that meets the outer world. And the outer world is the field of your incarnation. That’s where you are. You’ve got to keep both going. As Novalis said, "The seat of the soul is there where the inner and outer worlds meet."      Joseph Campbell

So, yes, when I am teaching Julius Caesar this week, I make the kids decide their political party. That means they have to research BOTH the Democrat and the Republican parties. They have to decide where they stand on the issues. That means the have to research the PROs and CONs of stem cell research, gay marriage, abortion, the war in Iraq, and etc. The parents have NO problem with their kids researching the Republican party, but wow, I can't even tell you how many have called in upset that their kids have to research the Democrats? Is anyone else trying to keep your jaw from dropping open??? Welcome to my world.

Back to the mother. Today I was informed of her latest rage against me. It is the fact that I want to teach Persepolis, a novel of a young girl coming of age in war torn Iran. Hmmmm, 10th grade is World Literature. We read stories to understand people in general and ourselves in particular. 

Can you think of any culture in the world that American's need to learn about and identify with than that of the Middle East? 

Do we really want to continue to propagate hate and fear and lies and all the things that follow? I asked again, "Have you read this book?"  I am waiting for her response. My only idea of why she doesn't want me to teach this is either A) She thinks it's about Terrorists or B) the title "Graphic Novel" makes her think it will have naked pictures? I really can't understand it.

But, teaching is exhausting me...and it's not even the students, it's the parents.

Some of America's most commonly banned books:

1. To Kill a Mockingbird

2. Huckleberry Finn

3. I know why the Caged Bird Sings

4. The Bluest Eye

5. A Wrinkle in Time

6. The Outsiders

Deconstructing The Scarlet Letter

Ok, I posted this, then I got all insecure and I deleted it (after a few of you were kind enough to comment) and then I remembered that I like to kick insecurities in the butt...so here I am reposting this.

Rowena, the Warrior Girl, tagged me the other day. I was supposed to give six random facts about myself, but instead, I thought I would share with you all a story. I've been meaning to write more lately, and I wrote this a couple of months ago and haven't shared it with many people, so I thought I would share it here. It gives a pretty good idea of me. I love recreating moments from my memory that were as good in real life as they appear on paper.

So here you go....the number one reason why The Scarlet Letter remains one of my favorite books. And yes, the principal really told me not to teach it.

Whatever you do, DON’T teach The Scarlet Letter

“Ok, y’all settle down.” I stood at the front of the room holding a box of The Scarlet Letter. Now listen, because I’m going to tell you something. No one in this school believes that you can read this book.” I started handing the books out, one by one, looking each student in the eye. “They don’t think you’ll ‘get it.’” I said as I passed one to Shenedria, then Sharonda, then Sh’miae, and finally to Caroldoria, my saving C in a row of S’s. “In fact, they told me not to teach it.” I paused and looked into Jabbar’s face, my most rebellious student, I knew he would love this. “So, guess what our new unit is going to be? “ Jabbar’s face turned into a slight smile as he felt the book in his hands. I kept walking and passing out the book. “Ok, we’re going to start today. It won’t be easy.” I said this as I looked into Jordy’s eyes. He knew something about life not being easy. He was 19, still trying to pass high school. His parents had abandoned him long ago, leaving him and his younger brother with his aged grandmother. He worked nights, sometimes all night. He never turned in his homework, but he always showed up for class. “It’s going to take effort.” A book to Bintu. “It’s going to take dedication.” A book to Tyrell. “It’s going to take us working together.” The last book to Amanda, the only white girl besides me. I went and moved back to the front of the room with my book in hand. “However, I really think this is a valuable book. On the surface it is about a love affair between a married woman and a priest.” Shouts, yells, and other suggestive whistles filled the air. “But underneath you will find a story about not being accepted by society, about making decisions, and most of all, about the judgments we place on others. So keep your hands and feet to yourself and enjoy the ride.”

The first chapter took us two days to go through, the new vocabulary came daily as I would read a paragraph. We would stop, and I would put it into understandable terms. The significance of the detail of the prison door, the lone rose bush that grew outside, the significance of starting the novel after the affair to show consequences, and the symbol of Pearl herself. They loved it, they struggled with it, they related to it, they lived it.

The time came for the first writing assignment. The kids had to write their own ideas of what was driving Arthur Dimmesdale. What were his intentions and motives? I came to Dicarrio Jenkins’ paper, the paper of the kid who, on the first day of class, told me I needed to pronounce his name with “a little more attitude.” This was his paper, “Arthur Dimmesdale was the baby daddy who jus wanted a booty call.” I remember that paper because I learned for the first time the definitions of “baby daddy” and “booty call.” I had to smile because I couldn’t mark it wrong.

I had four pregnant 16 year olds in that class. None of them married, none of them ready to be mothers. In fact, two babies had been found in the trashcans earlier in the year. The girls had gone into the bathrooms, given birth, then threw the babies away because they didn't know what to do. We talked about Hester raising Pearl alone. We talked about not having a father there to help, most of these kids didn’t have fathers either. During one poignant discussion, a young girl, Sade, came up to me and said, “Oh, Miss Bee, I be fittin’ to have this baby, can I use the hall pass, ma’am?” Just then her water broke. There was an amniotic fluid stain on the carptet all year long. That remains today, the most valid reason for using the hall pass I have ever had. I called the office, they called the ambulance. Did my kids understand having babies when you shouldn’t?

They became fascinated with the scarlet letter Hester was forced to wear. A large red A marking her sins to the world, telling the community to avoid her. These kids have grown up thinking that the color of their skin is a Scarlet Letter. Did they understand what it would be like to be in Hester’s shoes?

A black on white fight broke out across the school at a part a few days later. Many of my kids saw it, and some of them were in it. It’s the old West Side Story kind of fight. We discussed it, like we did everything. I realized that I was, to many of them, the moral parental influence that they so desperately needed. Did they learn from the hate that consumed Roger Chillingworth?

Day after day, week after week, we read, and talked, read and talked. I lost my voice, I bought it on tape, and still we read.

The day we finished. I will never forget. It was a graduation scene from a cheesy WB drama like Felicity, only it was in inner city Florida, the kids didn’t have name brand clothes and BMW’s. In fact the ceiling had fallen in the day before, the heater ran non-stop and there was a never-ending battle against cockroaches. I read the last sentence. Arthur and Hester were now buried quietly besides each other. I closed my book. There was a moment of silence. I looked up at them and said, “You did it.” Then the explosion I was waiting for. They stood, they cheered, they hugged, they threw their novels up in the air like graduation caps.


When everyone said they couldn’t do it, they did it.

High School is Wicked

OK. Tomorrow is the big day. Tomorrow the teenagers will flood my room. They will get the freshly copied syllabus, they will begin testing and pushing the limits of my classroom. They will begin looking around and seeing who is popular, and who is not (thus the song from Wicked with Glinda and Elphaba....and yes, at NYU, I did actually get cast as Glinda in a play...I had to play her two different ways...one in which I created a neurotic Glinda who just had a nervous breakdown and was a chain smoker, you should have me show it to you sometime).

Back to the kids....

They will form clicks. They will put themselves into groups, the nerds, the jocks, the cheerleaders, the preppies, the Christians, the atheists, the emo kids....so many, many different ways to label one another and differentiate themselves from the next kid...and when they come into my room, I want to strip it all away. I want them to see a little bit more into each other, I want to encourage the shy student to speak up, the class clown to listen, the bully to feel tender emotions....how will I do this? Through the great literature of the world, through ideas, through discussion, through teaching and fostering and caring and being interested in them....the characters in literature are great reflections of ourselves, and it is through relating to them that perhaps we form a little bit more of who we are. That is the power behind stories.

And so, in preparation, for going back to high school, I took out one of my favorite teenage dramas about the seriousness of cheerleading....and it reaffirmed to me my mantra for the school year...that's right all you teenagers full of angst and hormones. I say to you...


BRING IT ON!