Friday Fairy Tales

Today was a bizarre day scheduling-wise. Since our school is closing, our kids are being farmed out to a bunch of different high-schools; today, many representatives from the other schools came to ours, to touch base with their respective kids. It was also "Field Day," i.e. the day where the whole school gets one giant recess.

This meant that I only had five students in 5th period. And, those five kiddos were only going to be there for about 20 minutes.

"Do you guys want to blog...?" I asked. "That's what the other classes did, it's an extra credit option..."

"No, let's hang out and talk!" Andy said, plopping down on the floor in front of the fan. "Socratic Seminar!"
"Let's tell fairy tales!" said Maisie, and sat down beside him.

We've been discussing allegory this week, which ties into our unit on Animal Farm. The extra-credit blog option was to create their own allegorical story. We could work that into fairy tales...

I sat down with them and the couple remaining kids followed suit. "We could tell ALLEGORICAL fairy-tales..." I offered. "About our own lives."

Andy-- forever the catalyst-- grinned and said, "You first! Lead by example!"

I thought for a second. "Once upon a time... There was a young maiden. She LOOKED like she was fifteen, but actually she was much older..."

The kids laughed-- Maisie gives me endless grief about how young I look.

I continued: "And she was in charge of teaching all the little squirrels and birds of the forest. That's you," I clarified. The kids grinned and nodded. "And... sometimes the birds would get distracted from their lessons and fly away... and sometimes the squirrels would chatter really loud, but the maiden liked them all anyway. And she would often spend long hours going to collect water and food for the animals after they had gone to sleep. And one day, she met a fairy godmother, and got to make a wish," I said.

"Actually--" I paused. "She got two wishes. Because I want two wishes. Actually--" I paused again. "She got three wishes."

The kids laughed.

"The first wish was that the birds and the squirrels would always know how much POTENTIAL they had," I said. "The second wish was that SHE would always remember how much potential they had. The third wish was for a magic wand that would silence their voice-boxes when they chattered too much." The kids cracked up again.

Maisie's fairy tale started off like so: "Once there was a peasant girl... Who was born to two OBNOXIOUS gypsies. And one day, she started walking towards the castle, towards the kingdom... And she saw a prince who was a JERK-FACED LOSER, and she fell in love with him... And then, you know. He was awful."

"So he was an evil prince in disguise as a handsome knight?" I asked.

"Yes! That's exactly what he was," she pronounced.

Andy's story began, "So there was this CASANOVA..." which made me laugh. Then he continued to tell a story that was very much a straight-forward version of his own, albeit told in third person. "He went to get educated, but... Things kinda got hard. He wanted to go off and be this big shot business man, but, you know..." He shrugged and looked at me, his face a little crestfallen. Andy is very smart, but has failed many of his classes, including ours.

I interrupted him. "And then HE met a fairy godmother, and she told him that he was young and that it was EARLY in his life, and that he still had every chance in the world to become a hot-shot business man."

The stories ended up working with the allegorical theme-- Fiona equated her and her siblings to three different kinds of suitcases, and even though Tommy didn't quite understand how to translate his story into allegorical characters, we worked it out together.

So the Friday Fairy tales ended up being a pretty great way to wind down those 20 minutes. "And they all lived happily ever after..."

Sure hope so.

"Do you WANT me to chase you down? Because I will."

And then, I did.

5th period was NUTS today. When Keith was asked to go out in the hall because he was being so disruptive, he decided to just split. As I saw him making a bee-line down the hallway, I leaned out the classroom door and suggested he work at a table near the room. He looked over at his shoulder at me, and kept on walking.

And so I said the thing. And then did the chase.

And we talked, and got things resolved, and he came back, and we outlined his paper, and then things were fine.

When I went back into the classroom, Craig waved his arms above his head and said, "Greta!"

"Craig, I'll have to help you in a second, I'm still working with someone else."

"Oh no-- I just wanted to know if the CHASE was over!"

I rolled my eyes and laughed. "Yes. The chase has been over for some time."

GadZOOKS. I shouldn't worry so much about looking young. These kids are going to make me ooold faaaaast.

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On another note, our boys' basketball team has been accomplishing steady win after win; last night, they won a game that will take them all the way to state.

This is HUGE deal. We are a tiny school. Our kids are poor. Nobody believes in us. And our motley crew is going up against these small ritzy private schools and playing their hearts out and WINNING. Yesterday, the school declared an emergency field trip and, at 1:30, sent two bus-loads of kids down south to get to the game in time, which started at 3:00. We don't have cheer-leaders; at the last game I attended, two of our girls got up in front and led our school in makeshift cheers, while the opposing side's squad did flips and lifts and jumps in pristine matching uniforms. But we WON. Today, we had a pep rally-- something which almost never occurs, because we basically don't DO sports-- and the school hollered its heart out. I found out that one boy, who was homeless only a couple years ago, is being recruited by Seattle Lutheran and may actually be able to go to college on a scholarship.

And now we're going to state. How awesome is that??