3rd Grade
We are reading The Island of the Blue Dolphins, and my students are getting it in a very real way. They see the important things.
It is about a girl who is left behind, totally alone, on a small island for many years. She loses everyone she has ever known, she burns down her old village, and she swears to get revenge on the wild dogs who roam the island—they killed her little brother.
But, as she she rebuilds a life for herself completely on her own, she changes and matures. She builds her own house. She nearly kills the leader of the wild dogs, and then saves his life. She keeps him as a pet, and begins taming other animals on the island.
“Why does she decide never to kill another animal?” I asked my students.
“They are her family now,” one of them replied, “She has had to re-make her entire life from scratch since she was left behind, and the animals are the closest things she has to a family now.”
The mouths of babes!
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I have one more 3rd grade story, but it is unrelated to literature class:
I love bugs, and everyone knows it. I have three beetles and three tarantulas in my classroom, I am bursting with fun facts about bugs, and I also have a set of stamps featuring sixteen different kinds of insects which I use while grading my assignments.
This year, I got a boy in my third-grade class who is a fellow bug enthusiast. A couple weeks ago, he brought his pet praying mantis into class, and I loved bonding with him over our mutual appreciation of mantises. I told him how much I wanted to have one someday.
Today, while I was chatting with some sixth graders in their classroom during break, my fellow bug-lover burst into the room, tiny and enthused, shouting, “Mrs. Steele, I caught you a praying mantis!”
With pride, this sweet boy stuck out his hand. And sure enough, a live praying mantis was perched on his fingers. The two of us frantically ran around the school together, searching for a suitable temporary container for the mantis. During recess, I drove to the local pet store and bought a little terrarium for it so it could be more comfortable. Now, it is happily ensconced in an appropriate enclosure, munching on a cricket.
4th Grade
We studied Emily Dickinson’s poem, “Forbidden Fruit” this week, and the students are now memorizing it. I love assigning memorization to my students. We practice it each day in class, and students always end up making spontaneous connections to the poem after we review it.
Here is the poem:
Heaven is what I cannot reach!
The apple on the tree,
Provided it do hopeless hang,
That 'heaven' is, to me.
The color on the cruising cloud,
The interdicted ground
Behind the hill, the house behind, —
There Paradise is found!
This week, one of my students surprised me with an insight after we practiced the poem together.
“That’s like me,” my students said, shaking his head. “I always want the next XBox or whatever and then once I get it, the next one comes out, and I don’t care about the one I got anymore.”
How’s that for insight?
5th Grade
We just read the chapter in Anne of Green Gables when Anne and Diana, excited to sleep in the illustrious spare room, jump into the bed and top of Diana’s unsuspecting Aunt Josephine. Angry at the interruption, surprised at being jumped upon at the age of 70, and altogether ruffled, Aunt Josephine threatens to revoke her financial support she has been giving so Diana can have her music lessons. Further, she plans to leave immediately, rather than stay for her usual long visit.
Enter Anne Shirley, and her dramatic apologies. She begs dramatically for Aunt Josephine to stay, to support Diana’s music education, and to blame Anne for everything. Laughing, Aunt Josephine agrees to the terms, on the condition that she may get to know “that Anne-girl” better during her stay with the Barrys.
We discussed at length the concept of kindred spirits, and the students enjoy Anne’s ability to find them. They are so charmed by the fact that Anne finds kindred spirits even in people who are her elders, such as Matthew, Rachel Lynde, and Aunt Josephine. They regaled me with stories about their own kindred spirits. Here are some of the delightful things they said:
“My kindred spirit is Susie, and we are nothing alike. Sometimes we get mad at each other because of these differences, but it never sticks. We just can’t stay mad at each other. We like one another too much.”
“My kindred spirit wrote a poem in her diary about how much she hates me, but then she made me read it and she said sorry. She is so weird and I love her so much. I wasn’t even mad.”
“A kindred spirit doesn’t have to be anything like you to be your kindred spirit. You just have to understand each other.”
6th Grade
We have finally arrived at the point in White Fang when everything changes. Up till now, White Fang has been battered and abused—beaten into submission and formed into a brute of a dog. His wicked owners have forced him to think that the world is a dark, painful place, where the only thing he can do is try to stay alive. Then, he is forced into dog fights, and savagely beaten between rounds in order to keep him angry.
In the chapter we read today (I always read this one to them in class), White Fang is inches from death as the life is being strangled out of him by a bulldog who has his jaws clamped on his neck. His monstrous owner, Beauty Smith, then comes into the ring, as his dog is dying, and begins kicking White Fang, full-force. And then… the evil man is knocked onto his back by a blow to his face. And so we meet Wheedon Scott, the man who rescues White Fang from this torture. He slugs Beauty Smith in the face (twice), and cries “Beasts!” as he painstakingly wrests White Fang away from the bull dog, tending to him as he gasps for air. He flings money at Beauty Smith, saying that he is taking White Fang.
“A man’s got his rights!” complains the monstrous excuse for a man.
“Correct,” Scott responds, “A man’s got his rights. But you’re not a man. You’re a beast.”
Several of my students started to cry in anger as White Fang came closer and closer to death, and especially when Beauty Smith was kicking him. Then, they lost control and started crying more openly once he was rescued. They were in good company—I can never read that chapter without weeping. When we finished the chapter, many students shot their hands into the air. I hadn’t asked any question—they just felt the need to emote with me. I was happy to oblige.
“I am an angry crier. And I am still so angry. That’s why I am crying. But I am also so relieved.”
“That man is odious. He makes me sick.”
“Weedon Scott is a hero. I love him. FINALLY.”
I love Weedon Scott, too. And finally, indeed. And now we can get into the part of the book I love most… When we find out whether kindness and love is enough to soften White Fang after everything he’s been through. Stay tuned.
