Forgive Me, For I Digress

It happened. Try as I did to avoid it, I digressed. Right there in front of my students. Shameful, I know. But I couldn’t help myself. Maybe I set myself up for it.

The heading for today’s half-sheet booklet page was “Booklet 1.7 – Weekend Update”. I know, it should have been about Obama’s healthcare speech, but I just wanted to know about their weekends. The only stipulation was that they had to write about ONE thing, and not make a list of “and then…, and then…, and then…”. Of course, as usual, it needed to be “unique, bizarre, interesting, unusual, reflective, or otherwise noteworthy – not including birthday parties, sleepovers, or the mall.” By the middle of they year, my students can recite this right along with me.

So I wrote about my weekend. We had a picnic at Stewart Park for our 7th grade students and their families. Decent turnout. Nice to see everyone. Beautiful day. But I found myself reminiscing about the days when I brought my own children to that park when they were young. I noticed that all the ‘old’ playground equipment was gone, replaced by plastic structures. And then I ran out of time. Some kids were still writing as I was penning and smiling on the overhead transparency. But I had to stop.

We did a go-around. Pass if you want, talk a bit if you want, read it all if you want. It’s a great way for students to share and learn about each other. It isn’t all school. These aren’t just classmates. Lives are being lived here. It’s revealing.

I shared last. This is what I wrote.

“This weekend I went to a picnic at Stewart Park. It reminded me of when my own kids were younger, and we went there a lot. There were different things to play on then. A tall metal slide, see-saws, and these metal swings shaped like animals. They’re all gone. Now there is a plastic play structure. I’m sure it would look incredibly fun if I was a kid. But what happened to the old stuff?”

Of course, I know, and they wanted to hear. I went on and told them about how I was probably scarred for life, deeply traumatized, by my older brother ditching me on the see-saw and laughing as I came crashing down. Or getting my tongue stuck on the metal slide when I licked the frost off one of the bars, and had to pull it off when the bell rang (Yes, just like in the movie “Christmas Story” – it happened to me.) And about the metal animal swings that moved back and forth like battering rams, ready to knock out any kid that crossed the path. There was even a rooster with a pointed metal rooster comb on the front of it. Lethal stuff.

I told the class, “You know, I could write a whole page about this. I could write an ESSAY about this. Maybe I will!”

Maybe I will. Maybe tonight, I’ll play with this, and share what I come up with in class tomorrow. My work in progress.

But wait, what about Obama’s healthcare plans? Writing about playgrounds isn’t part of the job, is it? I’m a teacher of social studies. There’s the curriculum to get through.

Eh, we’ll do the homework in class tomorrow. They’ll do better than if they’d done it at home, they’ll feel more successful at it, and I’ll know they got it right. And just as a small addition, they will see that I value writing, that writing can GENERATE ideas and CREATE thinking and isn’t just used to SHOW information; that writing is just plain fun.