10 a.m.
I'm all twitchy right now. SuperTeacher & I just had a conversation about one student's decision to use the phrase "love nut" in his nonsense poetry & why I probably shouldn't display it in class. Tell the truth, I saw it & failed to care. You wouldn't believe the kind of filth I got last year running the same exercise with 11th Graders. But SuperTeacher believes it to be a thing of concern, as they are 'laughing at me.' So I must pretend to care as well.
That bothered me for awhile - much like the Devil, I'm not keen on being mocked - but if I really worried about what kids thought of me, I'd work myself into an asylum by the end of the week. A lot of teaching is not caring, I think.
Also, I am comforted by the words of Daniel Manus Pinkwater in "Who's Little Jackson Pollack Are You?" When he taught art, he had only two rules: no violence and Pinkwater hands out the paint. He reports that every kid would test him by creating art that was either sacrilegious or scatological. (Aside - I spelled that wrong, "scatalogical," and the AutoCorrect fixed it. Is it such a common word in the Microsoft-verse that it is necessary to same time by automatically correcting it?) These kids would subside when their provocative art failed to get a rise out of him.
In may ways I would like to be Daniel Pinkwater (and not just because he is the inventor of Snarking Out). I think that in this particular love nut situation he shall be my guiding star. So - pfhht, SuperTeacher. I have a fat children's author on my side.
40 minutes later
Ok, ST's officially in a bad mood: a pathological liar tells another fib and it's my fault because I'm "not picking up on these things."
Serenity now (I scream in my head).
* * *
Smelting Snow.
By the time we were ready to leave the class this afternoon, the sun was beating down through the large classroom windows.
"Can you believe that they were calling for snow this afternoon?" I said to SuperTeacher.
"Oh, I know," she said. "We still have to have the smelt snow." This was the second time in two days I had heard that elusive phrase: smelt snow. So I asked about it.
"It's the snow that happens at the same time as the smelts run. I mean, it's just a coincidence, but every year: there's the smelting snow. After Poor Man's Fertilizer." Seeing the polite confusion on my face, she commiserated. "I'm not from the Valley either."
Smelt snow. That's one to take back to the incredulous hipsters of Toronto.
* * *
1 year ago today: Protesters wearing gas masks tossed many of the canisters back at police, drawing loud cheers of approval from the crowd.
