The Daily News
1 DAY-UM!
2 I had SO much fun yesterday.
3 Yesterday was my very last Welcome to the Café Verona
day.
4 Let us rewind. Remember the glorious days of casette tapes when you could rewind to a specific number?
5
6 If you can, then your age is showing.
7 They have this NEW thing called CD players, and you could push a few buttons and return to the past.
8
9 Anybody lookin'?
10 Don't mean to burst your bubble, but they have these things called CD's.
11 So I bought a 5-CD set of Frank Sinatra karaoke. What's that? You can stream stuff now? What's that?
Who knew?
Who knew?
12 I tried streaming stuff but school computers have all sorts of restrictions on them, so I have much more control using CD's. Yesterday at the end of our Open Mic poetry read, I invited another class into my room, and performed I've Got You Under My Skin, a tune I worked a few years ago to perform live at talent shows. The talent shows were staged by our Red Cross Club run by my colleague Melissa Marfia, and they were great fun.
13 The students expected me to sing, because I told them I do. But I usually sing and play guitar to Simon and Garfunkel's America, because we do a mini-unit on their music. Yesterday I decided to pull Sinatra out of a hat, and it was a great twist on a great day.
14 To begin, every class got into the entire day, filling the room with verse that was not only original, but that also contained pieces running the gamut, from Shakespeare to Maya Angelou. Each poem danced around the room.
15 GREAT masterpieces specific to each class.
16 Each period had students sitting on the rug and reciting some of the most incredible poems since the dawn of Man.
17 I don't remember a time when SO many students brought it.
18
19 I'm serious.
20 The students in each class moved at different speeds, but speeds that allowed me to see how wonderful they are when the pressure rides.
21 Some had to leave; some had to go to the bathroom; others delivered despite being stressed by everything imaginable.
22 Others sneaked in.
23 Others snuck in.
24
25 Both are correct.
26
27 The students wrote long ones, short ones, humorous ones, violent ones, and many with great topics: blankets, cupcakes, stars, tatoos, socks, riots, etc. You get the drift.
28 Some had emotional ties to the poems they brought. One student almost fell apart reading Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken.
29 Can you imagine?
30 His emotion got to all of us in some way, because there was a unified oneness to that poem that never really existed in a text book.
31 Here it is:
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps a better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both the morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
by Robert Frost
32
33 I woke up this morning and went on the computer to check any emails from students. Some emailed their work to me.
34 A student asked me to look for his poems yesterday because he had emailed them to me the other night, but I never saw his work.
35 It was in my staff mail. We have two different places we can be reached. Staff mail is everything we don't really want to read: memos, directives, surveys, the latest teaching trend that is SURE to make a difference, etc.
36 We also have this thing called School Loop, which is mostly parents, staff and students, but all with a better vibe.
37 His work wasn't in School Loop, which I watch like the proverbial hawk.
38 It got buried in the staff muck, which I reluctantly check when I can get to it.
39 There sat his lonely poems.
40 I printed them out and read them and they were beautiful.
41 He included Maya Angelou's Still I Rise, and Robert Service's The Joy of Being Poor, both masterpieces.
42 And then I read The Road Not Taken and thought of the other boy choking up at the end.
43
44 It all caught me this morning.
45 Anyway, the entire day was filled with magic and fun, and each period I tried not to butcher I've Got You Under My Skin.
46 My first attempt failed a bit because it took too long to set the room up, and I didn't have enough time to practice it. It is a different CD than the one I used to use, so I missed the cue to begin singing from the start. The kids didn't notice, but I did. I sang louder so the music didn't seem so out of synch, but it was, not gonna lie.
47 During my break, I practiced around three times, and I killed it the next period. The whole place elevated and it was a triumphant moment.
48 The next period I did equally well, but forgot one word somewhere in the song, a silent mistake.
49 My last two classes I also nailed it, except I noticed one kid KNEW the song, and I messed up the lyrics, which most people wouldn't have noticed, AND my voice had an exhaustion crack, not bad, but enough to mar a perfect performance. That happened two periods in a row.
50 It didn't matter. I had SO much fun, and the students had fun too, and they didn't have to study the last ten minutes of class.
51 And karaoke makes really nice jazz entrance and exit music, which I had going the whole time.
52 After school I found myself smiling hugely. Ah, someone probably posted something on Facebook, and others will probably comment about the cracked notes or the lost lyrics.
53 Do I care?
54 No, because that moment when that kid choked up on The Road Not Taken, and the beautiful poems those students wrote trumped anything else.
55 I was just dessert that maybe contained a bad raisin.
56 More fun to follow today and tomorrow, and for the rest of the year, because we STILL have Simon and Garfunkel AND The Taming of the Shrew!
57 Classic. Going out in style. And loving it.
58 Gottago.
59 Can't wait.
60 See you again.
61 Peace.
23 Others snuck in.
24
25 Both are correct.
26
27 The students wrote long ones, short ones, humorous ones, violent ones, and many with great topics: blankets, cupcakes, stars, tatoos, socks, riots, etc. You get the drift.
28 Some had emotional ties to the poems they brought. One student almost fell apart reading Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken.
29 Can you imagine?
30 His emotion got to all of us in some way, because there was a unified oneness to that poem that never really existed in a text book.
31 Here it is:
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps a better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both the morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
by Robert Frost
32
33 I woke up this morning and went on the computer to check any emails from students. Some emailed their work to me.
34 A student asked me to look for his poems yesterday because he had emailed them to me the other night, but I never saw his work.
35 It was in my staff mail. We have two different places we can be reached. Staff mail is everything we don't really want to read: memos, directives, surveys, the latest teaching trend that is SURE to make a difference, etc.
36 We also have this thing called School Loop, which is mostly parents, staff and students, but all with a better vibe.
37 His work wasn't in School Loop, which I watch like the proverbial hawk.
38 It got buried in the staff muck, which I reluctantly check when I can get to it.
39 There sat his lonely poems.
40 I printed them out and read them and they were beautiful.
41 He included Maya Angelou's Still I Rise, and Robert Service's The Joy of Being Poor, both masterpieces.
42 And then I read The Road Not Taken and thought of the other boy choking up at the end.
43
44 It all caught me this morning.
45 Anyway, the entire day was filled with magic and fun, and each period I tried not to butcher I've Got You Under My Skin.
46 My first attempt failed a bit because it took too long to set the room up, and I didn't have enough time to practice it. It is a different CD than the one I used to use, so I missed the cue to begin singing from the start. The kids didn't notice, but I did. I sang louder so the music didn't seem so out of synch, but it was, not gonna lie.
47 During my break, I practiced around three times, and I killed it the next period. The whole place elevated and it was a triumphant moment.
48 The next period I did equally well, but forgot one word somewhere in the song, a silent mistake.
49 My last two classes I also nailed it, except I noticed one kid KNEW the song, and I messed up the lyrics, which most people wouldn't have noticed, AND my voice had an exhaustion crack, not bad, but enough to mar a perfect performance. That happened two periods in a row.
50 It didn't matter. I had SO much fun, and the students had fun too, and they didn't have to study the last ten minutes of class.
51 And karaoke makes really nice jazz entrance and exit music, which I had going the whole time.
52 After school I found myself smiling hugely. Ah, someone probably posted something on Facebook, and others will probably comment about the cracked notes or the lost lyrics.
53 Do I care?
54 No, because that moment when that kid choked up on The Road Not Taken, and the beautiful poems those students wrote trumped anything else.
55 I was just dessert that maybe contained a bad raisin.
56 More fun to follow today and tomorrow, and for the rest of the year, because we STILL have Simon and Garfunkel AND The Taming of the Shrew!
57 Classic. Going out in style. And loving it.
58 Gottago.
59 Can't wait.
60 See you again.
61 Peace.
~H~
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