Fancy Things Club

This stretch of the year, in between February break and April break, is notoriously killer. I just know that if my classes were in the state of chaos that they were in last year, I would have developed a nervous involuntary tremor (a tick) by now. But by the curious powers of fate, the ship I captain has remained upright (although it has sprung some leaks and lost some crew on the way). As I strut into my classroom, my kids eye me with some trepidation and stop (or at least tone down) their misbehavior. The continued order and structure that exists precariously in my classroom alleviates some of the stress in my life, allowing me to maintain my sanity.

At times, there are attempts to inject some civility into the greater entropy of the school. A group of my colleagues recently started a weekly book club. I imagine that it happens like this: they sit down and spend an hour discussing a piece of literature (A Thousand Splendid Suns being the first book that we were expected to read). I suppose they eat crumpets and caviar too. They might also sip on some red wine, while they analyze the themes, motifs, and symbolism found in the novel. Of course, they must do this all in character, wearing the garb or costume that is representative of a character found in the book. After reaching a mutual consensus on the topics at hand, they adjourn their meeting with a secret handshake and decide on which chapters to read for next week.

We also receive "words of the week" sheets in our teachers mailboxes. On these handouts are a series of vocabulary words that we could use in our speech to encourage students to expand their diction from the everyday "f*ck", "sh*t", "motherf*cker", n-word, "OD", "snitch", and "dead-ass". I am going to admit to you that I actually look forward to getting each set of words. Immediately after grabbing hold of the sheets, I look over the new words of the week, and pick some words to use in my conversations with students and teachers. So far I've used "conjecture" and "defenestrate". Guess which one I've used when talking to a teacher and which one I've used when berating a student.