Before homeroom began today, I ran into a teacher who coaches the Quiz Bowl team at LHS. This is a sort of intramural form of Jeopardy, and at this school, it is not played for laughs: There are rigorous tryouts and a very selective student nominating procedure. If Quiz Bowl is any indication, academics are taken seriously, even competitively, at LHS.
Today's reading included a challenging short story/parable by Ursula LeGuin called "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." The College Placement classes began to read Camus's The Stranger, so now I am too. I'm hoping I'll get to teach a lesson on this in one of my next couple of visits.
Mr. T. did a short lesson on parallel structure using a PowerPoint, and I helped him check student journals, marking them for completion (check) or noncompletion (zero). There was a small interruption in the form of a fire drill, which was handled very smoothly, although my ears may never recover from the shrill blasts of the very loud warning klaxon.
Once again, the big disappointment of the day was seeing Richie, the child with Asperger's (and the largely useless aide), zoning out completely--and no one caring. Neither the aide nor Mr. T. tried toengage him or require his participation or attention. So Richie sat obsessively plucking his eyelashes, a peculiar obsession which did not go unnoticed by an adjacent classmate. She actually met with Mr. T. and requested that she be moved, saying that she didn't want to be mean but Richie was distracting and, frankly, disgusting. It was an interesting moment, but Mr. T. more or less swept it under the rug. Won't this student need to learn to be civil with all kinds of people in her life? Isn't forcing her to stay put the best way to do so? Won't Richie notice next class if she is no longer next to him? Won'd that hurt his feelings? All valid and difficult conundrums. I pose them here for reflection.
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