Reading Bird By Bird. The narrator in my book. Friendly. Guide. Get to know me will open the text to them. Need for humor. One of Lamont’s great skills is her use of humor as she writes. It constantly brings me up short, amuses me, and always gets me thinking. CI could sure use a little humor, all serving the end point of disconnected kids learning more. My students get to see the humor in it all after they’ve reached the point in their teaching where they are more or less at ease. The kids whose outrageousness is just so predictable that they smile at its approach. Or the nose pickers. Or the hands on hips tell ’em off style. Or the boys who just can’t sit still or look you in the eye but still wants so bad to be in the thick of it that he couldn’t help he wet his pants. And on and on. Humor. Not quite PC humor. Poking fun and that which needs to be made human by a little chuckle now and then. That kind of humor.
Now here I am, in these last several entries, claiming to want to write in a way that captures young adults. Using the voices of my students as one way to do that. Well, duhhhh. Why not have them read some of what I’ve written and comment on it. Give me some more real stories, the ones they shake their heads at, the funny stuff. They way they really see it as opposed to worrying about how they show it because I AM TEACHER and you can only show certain things to the one who’s going to grade you.
lots going on here.