The "Advice to an Incoming 7th Grader" letters that I ask my exiting 7th graders to write on the last day of school need to be screened carefully. You never quite know what a student will write. Most students do a fairly good job of taking on the big brother/big sister role of telling a nervous incoming student what to expect. The idea is that each of my new students in September gets a letter to open that makes them feel welcome and they get some words of wisdom from a peer on the academic, behavioral, and social expectations that naturally get a little more intense at this stage.
This year I decided to read through them and get the screening done before July so I can relax into summer and not have to rush right before school starts. So today's rainy weather has given me the right mood to settle in and read through the letters.
Typically I find that I have to pull out a few nutty ones. Some of the nuttier ones over the years had lines such as "Whatever you do, run for your life!" or "Fo shizzle. YOLO, you know, right?" Letters with disturbing lines such as "Don't worry. Piece of cake. I didn't do any work in 7th grade and I still got As and Bs" also need to be culled.
So far today I have not come across any nutty ones but am surprised to find that almost all of them have a similar message. Our group of 7th graders this year characterized the team teachers as good and very supportive, but strict if students fooled around and misbehaved. There are lots of warnings to the incoming of what to do and what not to do in each of the teacher's classrooms. "Never ever sit in Mrs. Cowperthwaite's chair and don't even think about wheeling around the room in it!" (Yes, good. They nailed my pet peeve). The letters also seem to be characterizing the work in all classes as being "a lot" and that "It's really important to keep up on it and get it done."
Well, now this is all very interesting because this year it felt like my teacherly advice was going in one very silly collective ear and out the other very silly collective ear. More than any previous years, I had assignments turned in late (or not at all) or partially completed and students satisfied with taking a lower grade. This year's group also introduced me to multi-colored stress putty and its amazing ability to stick to virtually any surface, long after its user had departed the classroom. They demonstrated new ways of propelling paper around the room. They communicated spontaneously and often by doing the Dab dance in the center of the classroom, sometimes in the middle of a test. Where, then, did all these earnest advice letters come from?
Here's one that could not have been any more concise:
"Best thing to do in 7th grade - shut up, sit down, put the phone away, read a book, pay attention."
That's it. Not even a closing and signature.
I'm not sure what to make of all this. Though a couple mentioned enjoying the many field trips we took, as well as some of the projects we did throughout the team, the overriding tone of these letters is closer to stern than sage. What about all those carefully-planned lessons and activities, stories, films, writing shares, experiences and discussions we had in language arts class? Not much mentioned about the learning and the content.
Hmm. Maybe I will just set these letters aside until August after all. I don't want to frighten the incoming.
Almost every time I go to the grocery store I meet a former student stacking peppers in produce, slicing cheese behind the deli counter, or cashing me out at the register. The eyes I always remember, but everything else can change by the time one of my former seventh graders gets about halfway through high school. And if they are college students working on summer break, the changes are even more extreme.
The eyes catch me, a flash of recognition comes first by the young man or woman before me. This is followed by a smile and a hearty greeting. The student will usually say one of two things: "Hi, Mrs. Cowperthwaite!" or "You were my teacher! Remember me?" Once in a while they will say, "You were my favorite teacher!" or "I'm still writing!" both of which are lovely to hear.
It's the "Remember me?" that makes me want to melt into my shoes and hide because yes, yes, I do remember you. The eyes! I know you...I know you...I just don't remember your name.
The name! If I am at Hannaford Supermarket, it is on the employee tag. Dare I slide my eyes down to read it? I do. I must. Everyone wants to hear their name. Everyone wants to be remembered.
I do the eye slide.
"Angelica! How are you doing?"
"Carlton, it's good to see you! What year are you in now?"
They see the eye slide. Please forgive me. Once the name comes, I can usually remember a small personal detail and chat a bit and I hope that makes forgetting their name more forgivable.
Why is it the name seems to go first? Very rarely, I will remember a student's name after two years and retaining that name is usually for a good reason. That student either did something stellar (like got an award for work on cold fusion in science club or something) or their behavior was so unusual in seventh grade that everything about them, every interaction with them, is imprinted somewhere in my brain, probably whatever part retains the fight-or-flight response or the part where you file the warning of not to get too close to a hot stove. There have been a lot of hot stoves over the years.
Some names go quicker than others. If a Caitlyn, Kaitlyn, Kate, Katey, Cate, Caitlin Kaitlin, or Kayteeee comes my way, I have lost her name by August of the current year. Same goes for Aidan, Aiden, Ayden, Adin, or Aden. Sorry boys.
By now I have had close to twelve hundred students come through my classroom so of course that memory pipeline in my mind is full and spitting out rosters of earlier classes like a Play Doh press. Most teachers I work with say they have the same problem. But what to do about it? One veteran teacher, who has since retired, told me to be blunt about it. She told her students that if they ever see her after they had moved on from their year with her, that they should start out by saying their name when they greet her. I also observed this teacher meet a former student and she simply said, "Please remind me of your name, sweetheart." My aunt, who had five children and had begun calling at least one of them by the dog's name daily, kept it even simpler than that. She renamed them (and the dog) all Dewdrop. Then her nieces and nephews all became Dewdrop. When grandchildren came, they were all Dewdrop.
I don't think I'm there yet with Sweetheart and Dewdrop, though. I may need another decade in the classroom trenches to pull that one off. For now I'll have to rely on the eyes and the name tags.
I've never heard any other teacher talk about this so I'm going out on a limb here because I suspect there might be another teacher out there, especially a middle school teacher, who may feel the same way. The thing is, I feel weird the first few days of summer vacation. I walk in circles around the house, pick things up, forget where I put them down, stare at the backyard a lot, start things and walk away without finishing. I leave half-cups of coffee and vacant holes dug in the ground where a plant needs to go. There's a mental fog that comes over me. It's as if I am stultified by the silence, the stillness, the peace around me. No one is calling my name and I do not have a large clock ticking down the minutes until I can go to the bathroom.
At some point in the day, usually afternoon, I'll have a burst of lucidity and begin directing the dogs every few minutes. They give each other a look of wonder as to why I am home and telling them what to do but, being dogs, they eventually comply. Let's go everybody! We're going outside now. We're going inside now. Wipe your paws. Get some water. Time for lunch. It's possible I might be doing the same thing to my husband when he gets home in the evening. I'll have to ask him.
It's not that I don't have a life, things to accomplish. After I pack up the classroom, I peel out of the school parking lot with my summer to-do list like everyone else. There are beach trips planned, a pile of books I've been wanting to read, road trips to visit friends and family, gardening projects, a garage to clean out, and gym workouts to do. All of this just doesn't seem to happen until I wake up from whatever haze I fall into after the school year closes.
It certainly would be too strong to compare this feeling to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but I have my suspicions that it is related to coming down from the stress of the school year. The high-state of alertness and readiness required to respond to the shifting energy of young adolescents and the unexpected moments in the classroom, takes a while to shed.
A few years ago I attended a conference in which the presenter shared some occupational research that found classroom teachers are second only to air traffic controllers in the amount of split-second decision-making that they need to make during their work day. Now, I realize that I do not have the same level of urgency in my job. I do not have human beings in life-support capsules at 30,000 feet up in the air, landing, and taking off on busy runways, so it is a bit of a stretch to compare the two professions. But, like an air traffic controller, I do have a 3-D area around me at school that I am monitoring, assessing every few seconds. And I have even witnessed a few crashes. One year I had a 6 ft. tall boy who would spontaneously lunge back in his chair and topple backwards, legs in the air, as he fought gravity with all the calamity of a cavalry horse coming down in battle. Another time, I came around the corner of the hallway that has a ramp to find, at the end of it, more girls than you would think possible extricating themselves from the second shelf of an overturned library cart. You just never know what anomaly will show up on your screen.
Today I am four weekdays into summer vacation and am hoping that the stresses of the school year have washed their way through, that I am rested and my mind-fog will lift so I can begin my summer plans. A little more coffee may help, just as soon as I find my mug. I think I left it in the backyard.
Just about everyone who has attended public school in America can picture the scene on the last half-day of school. It is a boisterous morning of locker clean outs, returning library books, and farewell activities. Students sometimes give me small gifts and cards. Some students hand me a note that they do not want me to read until after they leave.
Even after all these years, I still open these wait-until-I-leave notes a little tentatively. I guess it's because I question myself. I wonder if I have served each student well-enough. It's an easy "yes" with the well-rounded average seventh grader who happily breezes through the months doing what he or she is supposed to be doing. For other students, it's a long school year, a very long year of coaxing, and nudging, and sometimes dragging them along through learning. There's the social-emotional part too, the daily grind of telling them they are beautiful, wonderful, unique human beings without using any of those words because the only thing these types of students may accept from you, at first, is "Hey." These are the kind of kids that tend to write the wait-until-I-leave notes.
I know I should not really be so concerned. I have yet to open a note with a likeness of myself drawn in marker riding a broom with a wart on my nose. No student has ever written anything such as "You are not a highly effective teacher. Your lessons lack robustness." And I have never found a frowny face with the message: "I feel sad because I do not meet standards. You stink. " Still, there's something about this mysterious parting that puts me a little on edge.
Maybe it's because these notes so shrouded in mystery feel a little dark and subdued on a day that is frivolous and bright. I remember as a kid loving the big clean-up, the good byes, and chanting as we left school: "No more pencils. No more books. No more teachers' dirty looks!" and racing out into the bright June sunshine into what felt like an infinite summer. I don't remember ever feeling compelled to hand a secret note to a teacher.
For the most part, my students did evacuate school this year with a healthy burst of joy, leaving a trail of papers on the floor that had all been carefully graded and noted with thoughtful comments (Why, oh why did I bother?) In their exuberance to evacuate, they also left water bottles, jackets, hoodies, single socks and a variety of objects that were fired in the kiln in art class. They whooped, waved, and hugged their way through the halls, down the stairwells, and into the big yellow buses. Teachers at our school line up along the sidewalk and wave them away and then we all stumble back inside to tidy up the aftermath before we whoop off to our own summer.
I like to take my time with the aftermath, to be in my room alone for a bit as I purge old posters, peel away the bulletin boards, and toss out any piece of the room that just seems weary. It's a shedding of the old year. It needs to go. The students that came through the room during the year will never come through the room again and I will never be the same teacher again. They change so rapidly from September to June and they change me, I hope for the better.
When I do finally sit down to open the wait-until-I-leave notes, I know that just about anything, of course, could be found inside. In past years, I've found long, heartfelt letters about how seventh grade will never, ever be forgotten. I've also had a few notes from students who were not looking forward to summer due to a variety of difficulties with home life. The best notes are the simple thank yous from students I did not think I reached. The note pictured above is this year's favorite.
This is my cell phone. Go ahead. Laugh if you must. I've already bore the ridicule of 21 seventh-graders today when my phone slipped out of the small pocket of my purse during first period, skittered across the floor and landed square beside one of the student tables.
"What is it?"
A few of them came from neighboring tables to bend down and get a closer look.
"Oh my God, is that your cell phone?"
"Yes, that's my cheap little cell phone that I've had forever," I explained with a chuckle. No one was smiling.
"For real?"
"Yes, for real."
I went to pick it up and was blocked by a girl who had her iPhone 6S drawn like an Old West sharpshooter and she was taking aim at my LG.
"HOLD IT!" she shouted and with one arm she pressed the class back. They were now all out of their seats to get a look at the relic on the floor. With the other arm she shot a picture.
"It's a dinosaur!" Laughter. "Why do you have it?" More laughter.
The girl's thumbs rapidly flew over her iPhone's keyboard. "Wait'l my mother sees THIS!" I saw what she typed: Check out Mrs. Cowperthwaite's phone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (I may have missed an exclamation point).
Just like that, I was in middle school and by that I mean that I felt that I was back in middle school again, awkward and flustered. I felt as if I had to explain to them why I had this outdated little device.
"Well, I hardly ever use it."
They just stared.
"...and, so I um...I carry my iPad Mini around so I really don't need a cell phone other than this." Heat flushed at my face.
They were still just staring back at me.
"... and I only pay, like, $35 every couple of months..." In my embarrassment I started talking like them.
Someone coughed. A boy, trying to be kind said, "Oh, well I guess that's cool."
Students exchanged looks and returned slowly to their seats as I quickly snatched up my little phone and slid it back into my purse.
I started class as usual and we rolled along into the lesson for the day, but something was changed in the room, a shift in the energy. In middle school culture, the technology you carry defines you and the accidental sighting of my pitifully outdated cellphone somehow did not match the image my students had of me. They were shocked into sullenness over seeing my phone, as if I had revealed to them a wooden leg or that I live under a bridge.
So why do I still have this silly little phone?
The truth is, our life over the last few years had gotten too expensive and my husband and I scrambled to downsize everything -- our house, our cars, our commutes, our utilities -- anything we could, as his income shrank and I co-signed student loans for my son. The phone just was not a priority for me. Upgrading to a more expensive phone and plan was something I could easily do without and so I have gone on carrying the old LG all this time and limiting my texts to "K" and "C U L8R." I really don't mind and am happy to avoid the constant pressure of checking my messages or snapping photos of the world. Instead I can just "be" in the world.
But today I discovered that I did mind how my students perceived me. Today I just didn't measure up to their technological expectations.
It was Heraclitus of Ephesus, a wise Greek philosopher of ancient days, who said "The only constant in the universe is change." (Or something like that). As the universe would have it, I received an email when I got home this afternoon from my cellular service provider telling me that my old cell phone was obsolete and they were sending me a new one. The change would be painless and free. It's funny how things happen like this.
I guess it's time to upgrade, lest I become obsolete.
A few posts back I wrote about how my 7th graders have a fear of substitute teachers and that when I probed them a bit to find the underlying cause of the fear, it came down to a feeling of worry over whether or not they would "like" the sub or not. I've been thinking a lot about the importance students place on "liking" or "not liking" a situation or a person. I think the world lately may be placing entirely too much emphasis on this like thing.
It would be easy to blame Mark Zuckerberg and his blue thumbs up button, but then I remembered an axiom of communication theory: Media is a reflection of society. Society has embraced this one- dimensional evaluation of something. Either we like it or we don't. And we like the like button.
I suspect this narrow emphasis on "liking" and "not liking" is causing middle school kids a good deal of anxiety. What if they don't like something? It is a great unknown. You're supposed to like everything, right? And if you don't, then what? There is no thumbs down button.
It was so much simpler when I was a kid. I don't remember anyone asking me, with any emphasis or frequency, whether or not I liked something. No one asked me if I liked my sixth-grade teacher Sister Mary Bernadette. It didn't occur to me to like or dislike her. She was simply there, all six feet of her, in her black sensible shoes and her snowy white peach fuzz that trailed down both layers of her chin. She was my teacher, I was her student. She taught, I learned and we kept it at that. No one asked me which TV shows I liked. We all watched Good Times, Happy Days, Welcome Back Kotter, M.A.S.H and every Peanuts holiday special. No one asked if I liked visiting my grandparents for a Sunday dinner of ham, mashed potatoes, green peas and pearl onions. The dinner and the grandparents happened whether I liked them or not. The burden of judging something or someone wasn't there. And I was empowered, in a way, because I was not attached to this feeling that I was somehow a victim if I did not like something.
The other day one of my students was splayed across a table and down onto his chair like someone had removed all the bones in his body. It was last period and students were nearing the deadline on their last graded assignment for the year, which was to read four short stories and write a very brief summary and opinion of each. They had three weeks to get the work done and lots of classroom time and support. This assignment was a little different because I chose the reading. (They usually choose their own books and stories.) The splayed boy had completed no work on the assignment and I had tried every technique I knew to motivate him. I knew he had the reading and the writing skills, he just was not doing any work.
"Tell me exactly what the problem is here, and be totally honest with me. Why are you not doing the assignment?" I asked.
"I don't like it." It was a mumble because his face was mashed into the table but I understood it.
"Don't like what?"
"I don't like the stories and I don't like writing."
So I was wrong. I still had one more technique. The drop-the-reality-bomb-and-walk-away method. Use sparingly. Carefully and wisely consider the student. Sometimes works.
The bomb: "That's okay. You don't have to like it, you just have to do it because it is your final grade. Suck it up, buttercup!"
He did it. It wasn't stellar work, but he did it. Was it because I took "like" out of the equation? Did he "not like" the buttercup rhyme? I don't know. I don't need to know. He sat upright, found his strength, and persevered. And I like that.
The last few days of school in our classroom will be Dragon Days. When you are void of ideas and utterly tuckered out from a long school year, you go with just about anything that enters you mind and you run with it. Grades will have already closed so there will be no more argumentative essays to write or insightful connections to make to literary texts. Why not have a little fun? We will be reading myths about dragons, watching some short videos on dragons, and creating some dragon art. The grand finale will be a classroom visit from a dragon, a real live bearded dragon.
The bearded dragon belongs to my son, but I care for him quite a bit and adore him! He is a big guy, about the size of a teenage kitten, with a regal presence and a stunning profile. One of his favorite things to do it ride around on my shoulder in the sunshine when I am out doing some light gardening. My son has not settled on a name for him so I just call him Dragon.
When I announced that Dragon would be visiting the class, I expected a little stir of delight, as much delight as is socially acceptable among 13-year-olds. I did hear one student say, "Cool, I like those things!"
What I didn't expect was this from one of the girls: "Mrs. C, do you know if you squeeze a bearded dragon really hard its throat will puff out and it will scream?"
She is an unusual girl.
"Okay, so you won't be touching the dragon when it visits," I said.
"Oh no, I would never actually do that, I'm just saying..."
Still, she's not touching him.
Just saying.
I may have overdone it on this one. I'm big on spelling the word 'definitely' correctly, so much so that I had it not only framed on our classroom bookcase, I also set 'definitely' as part of every password that students need to access online class content.
And it goes further from here. Each September I ask students to draw out the word in big letters in their journals with FINITE as the root in one color and the prefix DE and the suffix LY in another color. I put it on spelling quizzes and in puzzles. I randomly stop kids walking in the room and ask them to spell it. I just have a thing for spelling the word right.
Somebody definitely had enough of it all. Just like with the whirligig that appeared one day on the air vent, there appeared today, just as suddenly, new writing in the frame to replace the word 'definitely.' It wasn't much of a whodunit as the writing is in Mandarin.
"What does it say?" I asked my Mandarin-speaking ELL student.
"It says,'Welcome to America'." He added, "I already know how to spell 'definitely'."
Last June I found this pencil left behind by one of the students. I placed it on a worksheet and took a picture so you could get an idea of the actual scale. Just think of the dexterity one must have to propel this little nugget along the paper! The stump of an eraser still in tact is impressive. The fact that a pencil still existed in June is impressive!
Pencils are a big issue in middle school. Over the summer, our teaching team sends out a happy letter to the parents of the incoming, reminding them that students are responsible for bringing their own writing utensils to school. We suggest a zip pouch filled with multiple, sharpened pencils, pens, and highlighters. The idea is that a student can be quick on the draw, ready to jot down a snippet of important information or begin a written assignment in the blink of an eye. Is it too much to ask?
Apparently so. Though the zip pouches often show up on the first day of school, they mysteriously disappear at a mind-boggling rate. By October, all but a few are gone. Students who still have their zip pouches start to guard them like gold; the rest begin pencil begging.
The pencils beggars start with their peers, and then begin begging the teachers. Do you have a trick for lending out pencils and getting them returned? I don't believe you. I have tried them all and none of them hold up to the test of time and practicality. I have tried affixing giant orange and pink artificial flowers to the tops of pencils with floral tape thinking no middle school student would be caught dead walking down the hall with those things. Didn't work. The floral tape was picked off, flowers ditched, and the pencil smuggled out the door. I have tried taking a shoe as collateral for a lent pencil, only to be thwarted by a fire drill in which I must return the shoe without getting the pencil back. Besides, stinky feet just don't make it worth it. I have even tried Harry K. Wong's The First Days of School procedure of marking a can "Sharpened" and "To Be Sharpened" and assigning pencil duty to a vigilant and inflexible student who would badger her classmates into doing the right thing. But the appointed student got tired of doing pencil duty and by second semester it had become totally uncool to volunteer for it.
In the early 1980s, when I was in middle school, we did not have pencil issues. It was such a non-issue that I cannot even remember it mentioned. One simply just had a pencil and you did not ask a teacher. I don't know. Maybe I am mis-remembering and getting old and cranky.
Tonight I am getting our summer team letter ready to send out to the parents of next year's crew. Again I will remind them to buy a little zip pouch and fill it with writing utensils. Remember, sharpened pencils. Lots of sharpened pencils, especially.
People bless me a lot for being a middle school teacher. They bow to me, sometimes press their hands together in Namaste and add "I don't know how you do it" and "I could never teach middle school!" Sometimes people reveal to me that they were, themselves, beastly, revoltingly awkward, or otherwise so repellent in 7th grade that they can't even stand to think about that phase of their lives. Even elementary school teachers and high school teachers bless me. Elementary school teachers seem happy to release their students into middle school as soon as hormones start to churn up; high school teachers keep their blessings short and sweet. "7th grade? Oh, yuck. God bless you."
And yes, some days teaching middle school are hard and horrible. They just are. There can be crazy bursts of inexplicable laughter, objects moving about the room in extraordinary ways, or a body or two starts writhing on the floor. There are tears and panic attacks, molars fall out with braces wires attached to them and periods start in chairs. On many occasions I find myself saying out loud, "What's happening?" They would all be doomed if this were 17th Century Salem.
But for the most part, I do feel blessed. Amidst all this pain and weirdness, a birth is happening and I get to witness it. Middle school students are going through a powerful transformation toward adulthood. They are losing their childhood securities (the known world) and stepping into the first stages of the adult world (the great unknown). There is excitement and dread, sass and paralyzing insecurity. They can be startlingly wise one day and irritatingly immature the next. It is a wonder to behold.
Middle school teaching is not for everyone, definitely not for the faint of heart. If you can roll with it and have the vision of seeing the unique being that is trying to unfold itself into the world, you can do it. Each day in a middle school is different. I have had no other job in which I have laughed every day, every single day.
Today I had to take a personal day to drive my son to the airport. Whenever I have to be out, I tell the students about it the day before and explain exactly what they will be doing for an assignment. Still, I know it will turn into an issue, a protest at being abandoned for one whole day. It doesn't matter what school I am teaching in or what types of kids I am working with, the indignation crosses demographics. They all scowl and say "Noooooooooo!" the same way.
I have tried not telling them ahead of time. I've tried sneaking off like an inexperienced parent leaving a child at daycare for the first time. Doesn't work. I still have to deal with the scowls the next day, along with a litany of complaints about the sub.
At the dawn of my teaching days, I used to think the protest was because they were all going to miss me. But thirteen-year-olds are more honest than adults trying to flatter themselves. With just a little probing I discovered it had nothing to do with missing me because they thought I was fabulous. They were, instead, sub-phobic. Their biggest fear is that the Aesop Substitute Universe will send them a sub who .dun..dun..dun...THEY DON'T LIKE.
"Oh my God, what if we get the guy that smells like cheese and smiles at us like a ventriloquist dummy?"
"...Or that lady with the hairy mole that shows us pictures of her chihuahua with the missing chin!"
They are literally afraid of not liking the sub. I'm a big believer in facing fear so after I carefuly review the assignment they will be left with and assure them I will return, I simply tell them "So what? So what if you don't like the sub? You don't have to like your sub."
Silence. Blink.
"We don't?"
"Nope, you only have to be respectful and do your assignment. That's it. You'll be fine."
And they always are.
There is, I suspect, a larger issue here about being bothered by something that you don't like, an issue beyond the walls of the classroom. Are we, as a society becoming a little too touchy about things we don't like? That would be a longer discussion for a longer day.
Sometimes they surprise you. Today I did not think we would make it more than eight or nine minutes into the 1963 episode of the classic sci-fi TV show Dr. Who before the squirming and indignation at being subjugated to boredom began. Even though I prepped them well, I still did not expect a very good outcome.
"Remember, like I said, this is old-school, everybody. You have to have patience to watch this. Things didn't go as fast in 1963 as they do today."
"Why are you doing this?"
"Doing what?"
"Making us watch it."
"Because it's part of our sci-fi unit and it's a classic."
"I love Dr. Who!" A voice shouted. I had an ally. One.
"Is it really old, like Back to the Future?"
"Can you make it be in color?"
"Can't we just read instead?"
You can see why I was concerned.
Lights out. Everybody comfortable. They all had their journals ready with their boxes drawn out on each page. Inside each box they had been instructed to jot down notes about setting, plot, character, tone, special effects, how technology is depicted.
The title of the episode is Escape and it came somewhere early in the first season of the show. If you're not familiar with the premise of Dr. Who, I'll spare you the details. For this episode you only need to know that Dr. Who, a time-traveler, along with his companions, are being held captive in a room by the Dalek who are a bunch of dastardly cyborgs. The 1963 Daleks looked like giant, aluminum badminton birdies. They wheeled around with toilet plunger protrusions that served as appendages and also provided the beings with sight. The setting looks like painted cardboard from a high school play, and the acting is stilted. I thought the class would lose it when they heard the Dalek's voice, which sounded like someone talking into a fan through a soup can. In fact, I'm not entirely sure it wasn't someone speaking into a fan through a soup can. The whole production is the epitome of cheesiness. Maybe we wouldn't even make it eight minutes.
But thirteen-year-olds are an enigma. You can't trust their attitudes, the sighs, the eye rolls, because just like the Maine weather, if you wait a minute it will change. The high string, synthetic whine of the Dr. Who theme music began. The waves of time undulated on the screen and it was like they were hypnotized. Not a peep out of any of them. They bought it. I stopped the episode half way through. They jotted down some observations. I asked if they wanted to continue and was answered by a hearty, "Yes!"
We made it the full episode.
