New Thing #361: Wonder

I didn't think I'd be able to squeeze another book New Thing into this year, but so I have. It's Wonder, the debut novel by R.J. Palacio.

A bunch of people have recommended it to me, since most of the book deals with fifth grade.

Some have just suggested I read it.

Others have suggested we should read it with students.

I'm here to suggest that every parent should read this book with their children when they're around 10 years old.

Here's the premise: August has an extremely rare genetic syndrome that has resulted in multiple facial deformities. He's been homeschooled for his whole life up to this point partly because of how he looks but also because of the accompanying medical issues which would have forced him to miss school.

The book is about how he adjusts to finally going to school in his fifth grade year, and how his classmates handle going to school with him.

I had a general idea of that premise, but you don't appreciate just how much goes into that premise until you read the book.

And the author does a nice job of helping to convey just how much goes into that premise by telling the story from a bunch of different perspectives, though August's is the main point of view for the majority of the book.

It's a wonderful (no pun intended) story.

It's very frank, addressing the realities a real-life kid like August must live through. And it highlights the best in human behavior…as well as the worst.

I think, if we want our children to treat others with kindness, parents should read this book with their children to spur conversations about how they would act if they were in certain characters' shoes.

I know the book made me think about those scenarios. I also know that some of the characters in the book exhibited some extraordinary behavior, and I don't know how realistic that is. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been that empathetic as a fifth grader.

I wish I was more like the character Summer, who quickly became one of my favorite book characters ever because of what she did in the book.

I like to think that if this book is widely read, more young people might want to be more like Summer.

Now that would be wonderful.

New Thing #346: My Brother Sam Is Dead

I'm pretty sure I've written before that one of my all-time favorite books is Johnny Tremain. Often, for a lot of people, Johnny Tremain is grouped with My Brother Sam Is Dead as 'books for middle schoolers dealing with the American Revolution'.

And, despite my love for Johnny Tremain, I've just never made the time to read My Brother Sam Is Dead.

But we're considering possibly adding an alternative to Johnny Tremain for the students to read this year, so I gave My Brother Sam Is Dead a chance.

Warning - this review will contain spoilers…spoilers slightly more revealing than the spoiler that is the book's own title.

I'll say it up front - I didn't love My Brother Sam Is Dead. It's OK historical fiction. But I don't love it as a book for middle schoolers. It has a lot of curses, and it's an awfully realistic portrait of war. Which, I suppose, you either love for students at middle school age or you don't.

I didn't. (I had a similar reaction to Avi's The Fighting Ground. I'm just not sure it needs to be that violent. Maybe because I hold Johnny Tremain as the standard, and that book is not about the violence.)

Johnny Tremain wins out for me because it takes place in Boston, and I love that setting for American Revolution fiction.

My Brother Sam Is Dead takes place in Redding, Connecticut, which apparently was home to the British raid written about in the book, but it just doesn't excite me in the same way.

And while you spend the whole book waiting for the title sentence to become a reality, it just doesn't happen in the way you'd expect. It happens in such an unimpressive fashion that it makes you frustrated…or at least it frustrated me.

My Brother Sam Is Dead does a good job of capturing life during the war. It starts shortly after the Battles of Lexington and Concord and continues right through to the late 1770s, and then an epilogue takes you way beyond the end of the war. Johnny Tremain ends pretty much exactly where that book begins.

And that's probably why I like it better. For me, the more exciting history is the lead-up to the war, not the war itself. I like reading about certain aspects of the Revolution, but it's basically a lot of chasing and retreating and a whole lot of down time. The lead-up to the American Revolution is where the action is.

Bonus Information: Esther Forbes, the author who wrote Johnny Tremain, also wrote a book called Paul Revere and the World He Lived In. If you're interested in colonial Boston and life around the time of the war, know that this is a great read. It may be the best non-fiction book I've ever read.

New Thing #330: Coaching The Boys

One of the New Things I don't think I ever wrote about (I'm keeping track, but this may have come up somewhere else in a different context…I don't think it did) is the fact that I didn't coach a team in 2013. It's been one of the highlights of my school year - coaching the girls' basketball team in the winter months.

But the major project I undertook last year prevented me from doing anything extra-curricular…besides the project itself.

So I gave up coaching for the year, under no realistic belief that I'd get the same team back this year.

I didn't.

This year, I'll be coaching a boys team.

The season picks up after Thanksgiving break, so I don't know how it will all shake out yet.

But it's new - for seven years I coached girls' basketball.

I coached some 5th and 6th grade boys' basketball almost ten years ago, and I've coached co-ed cross-country teams, but I've not coached a boys' basketball team.

It may turn out to be no different than coaching girls - I don't know.

It just feels different.

I've watched some of the boys' games in the past - they're faster-paced, and there are more points scored.

So I know that will be different.

But at this point there are a lot of unknowns.

Except that I do know this - I'm looking forward to coaching again.

New Thing #325: Using A Die Cut Machine

When I first started 365 New Things In 2013 I had a list of ideas of New Things I was intending to try but hadn't done yet and was kind of waiting for a challenge like this to make me finally just go and do them. Some of them - like trying stand-up - are not looking very likely to happen in the next 40 days. (Though hardly a day has gone by where I haven't thought about doing it, believe it or not.)

Others, well, I've done pretty well at making them happen.

Including today's. Although on my list it's not worded as "Use A Die Cut Machine".

Instead it reads, "Cut out word machine thing".

The 'cut out word machine thing' is indeed called a die cut. And, well, as far as modern-day machines go, it's a blast from the past.

The one we have at school runs by hand crank, and I've watched a bunch of people use it, but I never had myself. (For those not in the know, it's something where you put paper over a block stencil and it cuts out letters for you to put up on bulletin boards and such, rather than you having to cut out letters yourself. At right is an example. Don't feel bad if you've never heard of this: It's the type of thing that I only know exists because I'm a teacher.)

I came close to using it myself in September, but someone else was running their letters through the thing and they offered to take mine so I let them. I almost passed that off as a New Thing, but you know me - it didn't feel legit, so I waited until I did it myself.

That time came this week. Although, if we're being honest, I didn't 100% need to do it. I have some of the pre-cut letters that you buy at Staples that I could have used on my bulletin board. But I needed to try out the die cut machine, so I took my black construction paper and made my way to the faculty room.

I think you know this about me, but I'm not the most artsy-and-craftsy guy. I can take on something like a craft if I work myself up for it, but it's hard for me to initiate something like an art project.

Part of my reluctance is a fear I will mess something up and do irreversible damage. Like breaking a die cut machine.

Well, I didn't break it. I actually quickly became quite adept at it, re-using one piece of construction paper by running it through multiple times for a bunch of different letters.

I was kind of proud of myself for that - it seemed like a pretty pro die cut move on my part.

I've come a long way from a guy who just about a year ago was still calling it a 'cut out word machine thing.'

New Thing #323: Asking Students Why

It's been a while since I taught math regularly. I taught it in my student teaching year and I taught it in my first year in a self-contained classroom.

Then I got my current job teaching language arts and social studies and haven't done much in terms of math.

But I still think a lot about how I taught math, and one of the things I liked to stress with students was where they might apply what they were learning about math in school to their lives.

(An easier task with 5th and 6th grade-level math than the higher grades.)

And it's that thinking that inspired me to try this New Thing this year.

This is something I had done in September but hadn't written about yet - and there are really a bunch of New Things that I've been trying out and working on at work this year. I won't tell you about all of them.

Thinking about math, and why we learn about math, I realized that it's not something I do with the subjects I teach as much. I certainly think about the importance of writing and studying history, and I do touch on it occasionally with the students I teach, but it's not like we come back to it every day.

So I decided this year to spend a class period each asking the students what they think are the reasons we learn to write, and the reasons why we study history.

Their answers were what I hoped for…but they also didn't hit on everything. So I'm leaving these posters we created on the wall all year, in the hopes that as the year moves along we'll think of other reasons that we can add to the list.

I got the idea over the summer, and I'm glad I followed through on it. It may seem like an obvious question to address with kids, but sometimes in the hectic day-to-day of the school year you lose sight of things like this.

I'm going to keep these up on the wall so that we never lose sight of what we're doing.

New Thing #278: Len Solomon and his Bellowphone

That there in that picture is Len Solomon and his bellowphone. Len came to the school on Friday to perform at an assembly.

It's rare that I'll include a school event as a New Thing, but I'll admit it - we're in a bit of a New Thing dry spell.

And this was a pretty good performance.

So good that it only just occurred to me that this is also the rare post about music that doesn't take place on a Monday.

I guess we're just breaking all the rules today.

Earlier in the week I told the students we were having this assembly, and I knew there was a bellowphone in the title. I assumed it was kind of like a one-mand-band, and in my mind I assumed a bellowphone was some kind of instrument that accommodated a one-man band.

When I asked if anyone knew what a bellowphone was I got a few responses about the kind of instrument it was - they all sounded like they could be pretty accurate.

Turns out...it's something this guy created.

It's made up of tubes - like pipes and vacuum hoses - and pieces of metal and horns, and to watch Len Solomon play all of the different instruments he made from items like coat hangers and straws (he's more than just a bellowphone player) was something else.

I like music, and I wish I had a better ear for music. I can play a little piano, but I have no ability to do music by ear. This guy turns anything that makes a noise into a specific note - that is unfathomable to me. I don't even know if I can learn to develop that kind of a skill.

He mixed in some humor too - he killed with the 8-and-under set.

Here's the link to his site - if you're looking for some school-age entertainment, I'd recommend him.

New Thing #263: Bringing Two Girls To School

My two oldest daughters attend the school where I teach....in case you didn't know that. The oldest is in first grade - this is her third year at the school.

The New Thing here is that my middle child started pre-K this year - so now my commute is dependent on getting two children ready in the morning.

So far, it's been OK.

But it's certainly an adjustment.

I used to get to work pretty consistently at 7am.

I liked getting there more than an hour before any students - I got so much done in that quiet hour-plus, and then during the day I had opportunities to be social because I had lots of time before school to get done what I needed to.

Then I started taking my daughter to school, and I wasn't leaving the house until 7am.

Good-bye, free time.

Now I spend most free minutes during the school day slamming to get work done because I know before school isn't an option...and there are few days I can stay after school without family obligations to pull me away.

Luckily for me, the girls enjoy the activities offered after school, so if I'm in a bind and need to stay, I don't feel guilty about it. Also, they had some practice this summer with a long day and commuting between school and home with their camp experience.

And I'm sure I'm healthier because of the chauffeuring of my daughters. With the time I'm saving by leaving later I'm eating the solid breakfast that I know I've written about multiple times before. If I was on my own I'd be having Dunkin' Donuts way too much and I'm sure I'd weigh too much right now.

Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes one or both girls are slow to get going in the morning. Sometimes they want to listen to the radio while I want to listen to podcasts. Sometimes I remember a jacket for me and forget that I'm also responsible for two other little people and they're not exactly dressed appropriately for school and colder fall weather.

But almost every day for nine months I get to drive in the car to and from my place of work with two of my favorite people in the world.

And that's worth a rough morning or two.

New Thing #118: A Veteran Auctioneer

Saturday night, for the second time in my life, I was an auctioneer. As I joked on stage, this makes me a veteran auctioneer.

But I'll be honest - I still don't really know what I'm doing.

I like getting up there and telling some jokes, warming up the crowd.

But when it comes to calling out the numbers and selling the items...well, I don't know if I'm doing it the right way.

But I'll say this - and I am not one to toot my own horn all that much (says the guy who is writing about himself for 365 days in a row) - I killed it last night.

You might recognize that picture from my Twitter profile - that's from my first (rookie year) auction, two years ago.

See - my school has an auction every other year.

Four years ago this guy came and did the auction - he had done the one six years ago, too, I think, and he was a comic. He was fine, but the way he talked about some of the items made me think, "Maybe it would be better if someone from the school did that." I asked one of my friends, and she said it would be a great idea. "I bet I could do it," I said. She thought so too.

So I asked, and I was allowed.

And two years ago, I was good. We raised a lot of money.

I didn't know if this year could go any better. But I felt good about my material. And then the day unfolded:

I spent Saturday morning with my girls, and then after lunch I got ready to go. After I showered I needed to lay down. I have never had an anxiety attack, but if I were to come close, Saturday in the early afternoon might have been it.

After a few minutes I stood up, didn't collapse, and finished getting dressed, got my stuff together, and headed for school. And my confidence started to grow.

The closer we got to show time, the more confident I felt. And when the time came for my introduction (the joke-telling part) I was calm. I got a little nervous when it came time to do the money part, but even then - the folks in attendance were so great and patient with me it went smoothly.

My worst fear is that we left money out there - that might have happened once, but I also feel like there were times that I got bids to go higher than they might have otherwise.

I don't know that I'll make a second career out of auctioneering. (I would like one of my 365 New Things this year to get on stage for some stand-up...stay tuned.) But I like knowing that if I have the opportunity to do it that I can feel more and more confident in myself.

I hope I'm not coming across as cocky. Because I'll tell you what - I almost took last night for granted. After it ended two years ago I was in a celebratory mood - I felt like I conquered something impossible. Last night, I approached it like a job - this is what I'm setting out to do, and I did it. When it was over I was satisfied, but I wasn't ready to do flips.

I did my job, and I did it well.

I expect the same thing will happen the next time.

But it would be great with a little less anxiety beforehand.