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Crystal Pratt ⁽⁴²⁷⁾ Illinois, USA

Crystal Pratt

Lesson Pathways

Skipping Thanksgiving

Posted Monday, November 02, 2009 (19 days 22 hours ago.) Viewed 1,493 times.

Merry Chrisgiving! Or Happy Thanksmas?

Saturday night, October 31, as the kids were still out trick or treating, I walked into one of those big chain superstores. The Halloween decorations had already come down, to be replaced with red and green and gingerbread men and trees and twinkly lights. I'm sure there might have been some Thanksgiving decorations stuffed away in a corner somewhere, but I sure didn't see any. For goodness sakes, the grown man I saw dressed in a chicken suit hadn't even had time to consume his adult beverages that I saw him carrying to his car! (Highlight of my night.) I guess Thanksgiving isn't a big enough money maker.

What did Tom Turkey ever do to deserve to be jilted in such a manner? Yeah, I know this happens every where and every year. I used to work in retail and we started getting our Christmas shipments in August. However, I assure you that by early November, I was pretty sick of looking at them. I'm really glad that the particular store I was employed by wasn't one that carried the dancing Grinch's and singing Mickey Mouses.

I ask myself this question every year, "Did I sleep through November?" I feel a little bit like Linus complaining about all of the commercialism of the season (don't even get me started on the cheap, plastic, lighted decorations). But really, who can argue with me? And this is coming from a person who (at least used to) insist that her Christmas tree went up the day after Thanksgiving.

I suppose it's something we're stuck with, living in a commercial society. But I really like Thanksgiving and I'm going to do my best to find a cute little turkey decoration to do my part to go against conformity.

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Remembering Grandma

Posted Sunday, November 01, 2009 (21 days 1 hour ago.) Viewed 815 times.

I found this while cleaning out my closet. If I remember correctly, I wrote it for a class while still in college. I"m typing it exactly as it is on the paper (minus the wrinkles and water spots. :-))

The back door was always open in the summertime. When the wind blew through the screen, the chimes that hung outside would ring. The wind brought in a fresh smell of flowers, grass, and warm summer air. Whenever I smell a summer breeze, I remember the summers gone by spend in Grandma Vargocko's kitchen.

My grandma was a very special and wonderful woman. In my view, she was a very strong woman, but very loving at the same time. She has seven children, twelve grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren at the time of her death. During her lifetime she had to undergo the teenage pregnancies of a couple of her children, the loss of one her sons, and eleven years later, the loss of a grandson, who just happened to be the child of her lost son. All of this did not make Grandma a bitter woman though. I believe that it made her stronger and more loving to the family that she so proudly called her own. The memories I feel compelled to write about are happy memories though. I want to remember the days I spent at her house in Valparaiso, Indiana before she moved to Kentucky, and long before she was stricken with cancer.

Whenever I stayed at Grandma's house, I would wake up long before Grandma did. I would go into the kitchen where Grandma would already have a glass of milk in the refrigerator for me to pour into my cereal along with a glass of orange juice, always in an amber-colored class that I always thought had finger prints on it because of the design in the glass. I would climb onto my yellow chair, that was really more like a stepladder, but I didn't care, it was mine. I poured my milk and ate my cereal at the brown table under the low-hanging lamp with the yellow lampshade that my uncle Matt always hit his head on.

After breakfast, I would go into Grandma's room always thinking I was being sneaky. Some days I would crawl under the warm covers and cuddle up to her, while on other days I would jump up and down on the bed screaming" Grandma! Grandma! Get up!" Of course, she was always awake before I entered her room and she never got mad at me.

I would go through my morning watching cartoons and playing in the yard, but always knew that it was time for lunch when Grandma went to the freezer. I cannot remember anything I ever had for lunch there, but I remember what Grandma ate. Every day at about 11 o'clock she would go to the freezer and get out the hamburger patties. She used a butterknife to separate the pieces of waxed paper that divided the meat. She cooked her hamburger in a black cast iron skillet and always ate it on two slices of sandwich bread, never a bun. To drink, she always had a glass of chocolate flavored Carnation Instant Breakfast.

I don't remember my to have ever been the cookie-baking, apron-wearing type, but she always took care of all of us. She always had Grandpa's dinner ready, complete with sliced tomatoes and salt and pepper shakers. She always served it to him in his chair on his t.v. lap tray just as he liked it. Grandma would sometimes prepare some of the Slovak dishes that my grandpa loved so dearly, and sometimes she would even let me help. Grandma always let me make chocolate pudding no matter how big of a mess I had made with the electric mixer the previous time. The one thing that she could never understand though was why I had such a hard time waiting for the five minutes to pass that it took to set the pudding.

It seemed as if Grandma always knew where I was and what I was up to no matter how hard I tried to get away with stuff. She would be lying on the couch with her eyes closed listening to "Days of Our Lives" just as she did every weekday. I would quietly sneak into the kitchen for some cherries from the crisper, but before my hand ever touched the door, she would say, "Get out of that refrigerator. You're not hungry."

Grandma was kind of sneaky too. I just figured out last year that she tricked me every New Year's Eve that I spent with her. After what seemed like hours of begging, I would finally convince her to let me stay up until midnight. She always said that I could stay up until the Times Square ball dropped. This past year, I noticed that the ball dropped at eleven o'clock in *our* time zone.

My grandma was a kind woman, but she was tough when she had to be. Once, with her leg in a cast and crutches under her arm, she walked with me over a wild field full of thorny plants and weeds to take me to play on the the playground. She was always there for me to climb onto her lap while she rocked in her orange rocker. She loved me unconditionally, but she always kept me in line.

There are so many memories that I have of my Grandma. She was such a sweet woman. I loved her very much and I miss her every time I smell a sweet summer breeze

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The Best Class

Posted Monday, October 26, 2009 (27 days 13 hours ago.) Viewed 1,148 times.

I shed a tear tonight. I'm not sure if it was a happy tear or a sad tear. I think both. I received this message from one of my former students: "...How u been? I miss you, i wish u worked there lol we need sum teachers who care"

Two years ago, I taught 7th grade in an inner-city classroom. The school was experimenting with their middle school by going to self-contained classrooms, rather than allowing the students to change classes for each subject. (There were many reasons for this, but one of the explanations I was given was to cut down on the fighting and violence in the hallways between class periods).

It was probably the hardest teaching job I ever had.

It was definitely the best teaching job I've ever had.

The horror stories? Oh, I've got a few. Every day of the first two or three weeks was a nightmare. A young man grew angry at another student and threw an overhead projector into a group of students, shattering it. When he returned from his suspension, he got into another altercation and threw my timer through my window. Another boy picked up a chair, ready to throw it at a girl in the classroom. I really began to wonder what I had gotten myself into.

I honestly don't remember the exact moment that things changed, but I know that I told them that we were no longer going to function as a classroom. We were going to function as a family. I know that it stuck with them because they reminded me of that all year long. These kids needed a family.

We had a Thanksgiving dinner together. Many of my kids brought in dishes to share. We sat together and ate together. I know I'll never forget it.

When the kids would come back from lunch upset over something that had happened, sometimes we'd have a family meeting. We'd take a few minutes of class time to discuss what happened and why we were upset. My rules were simple. 1. No shouting. 2. Be nice. 3. One speaker at a time. Sure, we missed a few minutes of math, but they weren't going to be thinking about math if we didn't hash out the problem anyway. And believe it or not, they didn't take advantage of this. We only did it a handful of times during the year.

I introduced the kids to service projects. I refused to do a fundraiser to go on a field trip. We participated in can collection, Operation Christmas Child, and other activities to "earn" our end of the year field trip.

I was pregnant the second semester of the year. When I told the kids, their joyous response made me cry. On my birthday, one of the boys' mothers, who knew that I could only stomach certain things, brought one of those things in - and enough for the whole class.

Don't get me wrong. We still had our issues. But, we handled 90% of our issues in the classroom. I chose to involve the kids in their consequences (mainly by making them call their parents if they were getting out of line)

I kept them out of the office, out of suspension, and in our classroom.

And then I got RIF'ed. My kids were furious. I wasn't exactly thrilled, but it's a pretty common thing, I hear. But nevertheless, I wasn't going to get to teach my kids the next year (the school was going back to traditional format the next year, so I would have had them again for whatever subject I would have been teaching). I decided that these kids had enough obstacles to overcome without losing contact with someone that they knew cared about them. I did something I wouldn't normally do. I gave them my email and my Myspace account so that they could keep in touch with me if they chose to. That's how I came to see the above message.

I went back to the school for their 8th grade promotion. I could almost feel my blood pressure rise when I walked into the building. But when I got to the room where my kids were waiting for their ceremony, I knew that the whole year had been worth everything.

Two years later, I still hear from about 1/3 of my class on a regular basis. They're freshman now, split between two high schools. But they still know that they can talk to me whenever they need someone to talk to. I even got a message last March from a boy wishing me a "Happy Pi Day." He remembered! (I made a huge deal about it. All of our subject lessons had something to do with those numbers and we even had pie that afternoon).

I can't wait to go back in four years and see them graduate from high school. I know they will. I told them they have to. But I really hope that somewhere along the way they are going to find "sum teachers who care."

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