We spent most of this windy September Sunday, a day when you could sit indoors behind the curtains and almost believe in autumn again, grading tests.
And lo, I was sad. And oy, I was vexed, especially when students missed "vexed" on the "is this word used correctly?" vocabulary section.
Sometimes I wonder if my tests are tricky-bad and not tricky-challenging-but-doable. Here's a favourite thing of mine... don't match the word to its definition; match it to its antonym. Ooo!
I just don't like people regurgitating whatever they stuffed into their head on the bus. (Like I did with the Nevada Constitution exam. See? It's bad form. Or bad karma?) I want them to think, "Well, if NECRO is the root for dead, and the opposite of dead is alive, and BIO means life, and nothing else fits... the best response is... BIO!" Otherwise you're just doing an extended version of repeating a phone number under your breath until you can find a pencil.
But, this being only week four, and the test scores being so low, I decided that tomorrow I won't plunge on. Tomorrow I will pretend that everyone tried really hard but my teaching was just inadequate. I will not think despairing thoughts about kids who sincerely say, "What writing assignment?" on Friday when it was almost all we did on Monday, and I know I explained it because half of you have notes and at least half of those people followed the directions written there.
Maybe we're all great and we can just blame the High Fructose Corn Syrup. These kids are all post-Nutrasweet babies. Yeah, I blame the slick evils of modern chemistry. There. Now we're all off the hook.
So, today we graded all of the tests, "we" being such a powerful pronoun here, and I divided the grades to analyze how each person did in relation to each state standard. Yes, I really did that. Behold my stout and stubborn majesty.
Then I made groups based on what each person needed the most. It's one of those things that's easy to do naturally down the road, but here I am in the fourth week, differentiating before I can even put names to all of the faces. (I'm sorry, but there are 50 more kiddos this year. You don't want me to know your name yet.)
Then I wrote 40 or so lesson plans. Yes. FORTY. All for one day - tomorrow. Each one tailored to each group's academic needs, apparent social skills, and seeming preferences for assessment. So, about five kids per group, about eight groups per class, five classes per day... that's 40, yes? That's why I have Amazon open in another tab, ready to deploy its eucalyptusy-pomegranatey mental scrub with super saver shipping? (Well, that, or I'll just make another library list.)
The kids will come in, find their groups, and hopefully will be engaged for the whole period in getting lots of extra practice in their area(s) of weakness while also getting help from their peers. (And from me, if they want it. I'll be the one measuring straps for dress code and wishing I'd gone to bed instead of blogging.) They'll be telling each other stories, drawing, writing... anything other than making me fill out discipline forms, I hope.
I still hate classroom management. It's still why we can't have nice things.
Below are the books I'm considering reading. If you have an opinion, or a suggestion!, please pipe up. My only criteria is that I'm trying to get back to reading novels. I read too much NF for the good of my soul, and short stories have been disappointing me for too long now.
Books I've enjoyed rereading now and again: She's Come Undone, The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, all the Douglas Adams stuff (duh), Good Omens, all of Stephen King (but I've really gone off him for good now - Cell was disappointing and Lisey's Story was incredibly uninteresting, if not a little circle-wanky), Roddy Doyle's Barrytown Trilogy, obviously the almighty H. Potter, and... actually I can't remember the last time I reread anything other than Potter. I like books that have wit (especially BritLitWit) and/or layers and/or new ways of relaying the story, but without being gimmicky, whatever that means.
For awhile I seemed to be reading a lot of Indian and Mexican/Caribbean fiction. I'm still burned out. I've soured on Piers Anthony. I'll read the last Robert Jordan when it comes, but don't think I'm happy about it. I used to love chick lit (Marian Keyes! Helen Fielding!), but then I checked out a bunch of duds. (Even Stephanie Plum I can take or leave now.) Romance novels irritate me, but I like romance that isn't inevitable. I loved Outlander - adoredadoredadored - until the sequels became the Big Festival of How Wonderful Claire Is. Time Traveler's Wife bored me to bits. Shirley Jackson is still my woman, but what are the odds of them discovering another trunk in a barn of unpublished work? Toni Morrison doesn't entertain me. Michael Crichton has been benched with Stephen King.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time was the best book I read this summer, but anything like would be... well, would be unlikely, really. Dreamhunter was also great; I'm not adverse to Young Adult fiction. I can pretend I'm reading it for work. I did not dig Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell at all, despite so many promises that I would.
I like travel fiction. I can't think of any examples offhand, but I'm sure I like it. Maeve Binchy is never less than a comfort and a sure thing, but she's already had her new novel for this year. I used to like Carl Hiaasen, but not enough to keep reading the same sort of tumbled-up action. Or maybe I can only take so much Florida landscape, especially from a Disney-hater. Oh, and I used to really enjoy Trevanian. He was a dick - there, I said it, over his barely cold grave, even - but I like books that draw me into the knowledge of experts. (Like The Da Vinci Code, but a little less ham-handed and a little more fact-based.)
I will always love Jitterbug Perfume.
So, known or unknown reader, if you can speak to these tastes, suggest away, and if there's anything applause-worthy or amiss about the list below, the comment box is yours.
To Your Scattered Bodies Go
I've always meant to read Farmer, and this just sounds so cool!
"To Your Scattered Bodies Go is the Hugo Award-winning beginning to the story of Riverworld, Philip José Farmer's unequaled tale about life after death. When famous adventurer Sir Richard Francis Burton dies, the last thing he expects to do is awaken naked on a foreign planet along the shores of a seemingly endless river. But that's where Burton and billions of other humans (plus a few nonhumans) find themselves as the epic Riverworld saga begins. It seems that all of Earthly humanity has been resurrected on the planet, each with an indestructible container that provides three meals a day, cigarettes, alcoholic beverages, a lighter, and the odd tube of lipstick. But why? And by whom?"
The Other Boleyn Girl
Should I read it before the movie comes out? Or is it the same old Henry and Company?
"Sisterly rivalry is the basis of this fresh, wonderfully vivid retelling of the story of Anne Boleyn. Anne, her sister Mary and their brother George are all brought to the king's court at a young age, as players in their uncle's plans to advance the family's fortunes. Mary, the sweet, blond sister, wins King Henry VIII's favor when she is barely 14 and already married to one of his courtiers. Their affair lasts several years, and she gives Henry a daughter and a son. But her dark, clever, scheming sister, Anne, insinuates herself into Henry's graces, styling herself as his adviser and confidant." (And so on.)
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
"Foot-binding was practiced
by all but the poorest families, and the graphic descriptions of it are
not for the fainthearted. Yet women had nu shu,
their own secret language. At the instigation of a matchmaker, Lily and
Snow Flower, a girl from a larger town and supposedly from a
well-connected, wealthy family, become laotong, bound together
for life. Even after Lily learns that Snow Flower is not from a better
family, even when Lily marries above her and Snow Flower beneath her,
they remain close, exchanging nu shu written on a fan."
It's unfair, but I fear Joy Luck Club comparisons. I loved JLC and read everything Amy Tan could pound out for awhile, but that doesn't make me an automatic fan of suffering Asian women and the friends who love them.
Little Fugue
"The Plath/Hughes story has been told and retold almost to death, but Flannery O'Connor Award–winner Anderson (The Ice Age)
breathes brash new life into the iconic tale in this hypnotic and
provocative novel. Anderson chronicles the aftermath of Plath's 1963
suicide from the perspective of real and fictional characters, notably
Columbia-educated fiction writer Robert Anderson, who is forever
changed by reading the Ariel poems."
I'm afraid I'll let myself indulge in too much Hughes-hate, though. He seems like a bastard, yes, but hating him is so 20th century.
The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden
"A lonely girl with a dark tattoo across her eyelids made up of words
spelling out countless tales unfolds a fabulous, recursive Arabian
Nights-style narrative of stories within stories in this first of a new
fantasy series from Valente. The fantastic
tales involve creation myths, shape-changing creatures, true love
sought and thwarted, theorems of princely behavior, patricide, sea
monsters, kindness and cruelty."
In the Forest of Forgetting
This may be cheating as these are short stories, but I keep hearing buzz about Goss, like I can't even read at the big kids' table until I finish her appetizers.
"Goss layers the Victorian tone and everyday magic of these tales with commentary on familial negotiations and the grave consequences for heedless behavior. Other stories consider family cohesion and snobbery, as in 'Sleeping with Bears,' about a Southern belle who exhibits "no originality" until she marries a bear named Trout Catcher. Her sister quickly comes to understand the attraction." (And so on.)
The Tenth Good Thing about Barney
Definitely cheating. Not a novel. But go on, read the description and sniff. I know it's a children's book... but you know what else was a children's book? Where the Red Fern Grows! (Dab eyes.)
Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog
"Flora Fyrdraaca is approaching 14, the age of majority, and preparing
for its celebratory Catorcena. She lives in Crackpot Hall, a
once-glorious but now decaying home with 11,000 rooms that randomly
shift positions."
Yadda yadda. That description doesn't really move me now, actually. I think this was an Endicott Redux recommendation which I will now hold in limbo.
Caesar: A Novel
Okay, if I could gulp down The Thornbirds at 15 (mmm Father Ralph), perhaps McCullough's take on Julius is readable and, shhh, sexy? Maybe a lot of hand-wringing in the epilogue from Marc Antony's wife as she has to raise Cleopatra's kids? (Did you know about that? There's a woman who needs a movie.) Oh, wait, Amazon says it's the fifth volume in a series. Oh. Hrm.
An African in Greenland
Oops, non-fiction. But maybe it could squeak by? The excerpt I read was surprisingly interesting. No, no, I must be strong.
Middlesex
I really liked The Virgin Suicides. A lot. In fact, I should've listed it above as I'm constantly on the verge of rereading it. Giving his second book a go is only a matter of time. Plus, I totally get/miss the Michigan angle.
"'I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.' And so begins Middlesex, the mesmerizing saga of a near-mythic Greek American family and the 'roller-coaster ride of a single gene through time.' The odd but utterly believable story of Cal Stephanides, and how this 41-year-old hermaphrodite was raised as Calliope, is at the tender heart of this long-awaited second novel from Jeffrey Eugenides."
(I pause here to reflect on whether I have a thing for debut novels or if I just get caught up in their marketing.)
Hunting Unicorns
This one seems to have gone OOP since I last considered it. OOPs. Actually, now that I read the description again... looks a little ordinary. Great cover, though.
Every Inch of Her
This one's off the market as well. Dang. It's not even at the library. Doesn't it sound good? "A 240-pound Dublin housewife with five children and an abusive husband
takes refuge with a bevy of nuns in this boisterously cheery and
raunchy first novel by Irish theater director Sheridan."
Actually, both of those books are supposedly at BN.com. Silly Amazon. Taheckwiddit - it's seventy-five cents at Half.com. I'll let you know how it works out.
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