The natives are restless

Today was our annual field trip to Dickson Mounds, a Native American museum in Lewistown. Personally this is my eighth time there in seven years. (My first year I had to go twice within the same week. Brutal.) I'll be honest that it's not always the most exciting place to go but I've gotta give them props because they teach the students quite a bit about Native American culture. My one complaint each year is that as soon as you step through the museum door you are face to face with replicas of life size Indian women without any tops on. Since I've been there so often I now know to warn my class about what they will see before we even get there. So on Friday afternoon I prepared them for it and we discussed how their culture was somewhat different than ours in that way. When we arrived today there were a few giggles, but I was really impressed that it didn't become an issue. Every year we go we get stuck with the same crabby, unenthusiastic woman who I had a run-in with two years ago (http://mritchason.blogspot.com/2006/11/politically-incorrect.html). She was telling the students about various types of pottery when she asked "What do you think Native Americans used this gourd for?" One of my boys instantly raised his hand. When she called on him, rather than answering the question, he asked "Why can you see those ladies' titties downstairs?" At that moment I would have paid an angry Native American to come in, scalp me straight Apocalypto style, and put me out of my misery. As I hopped up to take the boy out into the hallway for a not-so-nice conversation, the lady responded "I don't think this is an appropriate place to say the word 'titties'." At that moment I just wanted to yell out "CAN EVERYONE PLEASE QUIT SAYING TITTIES!" By the time we got outside the door I was bathed in sweat as I bent down eye level to him and let him know how completely inappropriate he was being. I soon remembered that he had been absent on Friday, not that this excused him from saying what he had. As I finished, I stood back up only to discover that his head was right next to yet another breast. He looked over at the voluptuous statue and then back at me. I gave him a raised eyebrow and not another word was spoken.

A household divided

Well here it is, the day before what's being billed as one of the most important elections in U.S. history. For Rachel, it's her first election to vote in since becoming a citizen so naturally she's excited. However, the two of us will go to the polls tomorrow focused on two different candidates. We're like the poor man's Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver. I guess the photo below from our front yard says it all.

#44

For the last several school days the students have been researching both McCain and Obama to make reports to share with the class. I asked them to also draw pictures of the two men as part of their project.

I think this is a picture of McCain after he tried to put Sarah Palin in another $150,000 designer outfit. The black eye says it all. You don't mess with the Palin.

I smell another Republican smear campaign. Are they trying to make the American public believe that Obama spent much of his youth as a go-go dancer at a gay club in Honolulu? With the blue eye shadow and glittery mascara he looks like a Tammy Faye Bakker drag queen. And as a side note, does he have that Michael Jackson disease which caused his nose to fall off his face?

So in the last picture Obama had lost his nose somewhere along the campaign trail. In this one he has a nose that resembles a butt. I’m not sure which is worse, to not have a nose at all or one that looks like it belongs sitting on a toilet seat.

I know Halloween is coming up later this week and that it’s all consuming right now to my class, but does John McCain really look like a jack-o-lantern with a dead black cat on his head?

Throughout this election unit we’ve been doing, it is clear to see where the political allegiance of the parents lie. A girl in my class has die-hard Republican parents who would literally give up their very daughter to get McCain elected. Her picture of Obama is pretty good, but it’s the name below the drawing that makes me smirk. In fact, I have a pretty good guess that her parents will be yelling something similar at the television screen when the results start pouring in on election night. Oh damn….uh!

I really believe this picture could help McCain capture all of those still-undecided Oompa Loompas.

This is supposed to be McCain, but to me it looks more like his elderly grandmother. Well maybe more like his elderly grandmother if she was prescribed steroids and ballooned to 500 pounds. Look for her as the new balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

What kind of racist homes are these kids living in where they think every African-American looks like Buckwheat? I’m surprised the boy who drew this didn’t include every overtly black stereotype by showing him in a field picking cotton with one hand and eating collared greens with the other. Only in Pekin.

The big O

On Wednesday night we headed up north to spend the night in the ‘burbs since we had an early morning appointment with a billionaire. After grabbing a quick bite at Chipotle (my first visit and sure not to be my last) we checked into the hotel. Rachel cut my hair and afterwards I took a shower, so we had already exhausted the two towels that were left for us in the room. We also shortly discovered that neither of us had packed the toothpaste, so Rach called down to the front desk to see if someone could bring some up for us with some new towels. When the man arrived, however, he only had towels in his hand. Rachel tried to speak her best broken Spanish but it was highly unsuccessful. She called back down and explained the situation and soon the same man arrived with the toothpaste, a toothbrush, and another towel. I expected to unwrap the towel and find a letter stating “If you ask for one more thing I will kill you in your sleep.” However, soon after I was trying to iron my shirt and discovered that it wasn’t getting very hot. Rather than calling the front desk a third time, I simply walked down there myself iron in hand. I explained my problem and she assured me that another one would be sent up to the room immediately. “What room are you in?” she asked. When I replied with the now famous 451 she rolled her eyes at the other woman working behind the counter. Rachel and I had officially one of those customers. I could picture her going back into the manager’s office and blogging about us on hotelgueststhatreallysuck.com. As I made my way back down the hall to the elevator I was spotted by our Spanish friend, whose face made it apparent that he had already gotten our latest request. He motioned for me to come to him and soon he was leading me into the secret housekeeping lair. There were boxes full of tiny bars of soap, plastic cups stacked high to the ceiling, and enough ice buckets to build a small castle. He pointed to a large stack of phone books in a corner, where I soon figured out he wanted me to sit. As I sat there he took six irons from a bottom shelf and plugged them all in. After only a few seconds he began running his hands along the heated metal parts of each of them. I began to have a suspicion that he was trying to see which one would cause the most damage when he smashed it into the side of my face. He then said the words “touch” and “hot” as he pointed to the collection of irons. Well those are usually two words that I don’t usually use in the same sentence, like “eat” and “salmonella” or “talent” and “Jessica Simpson.” I politely refused his invitation to fondle the scalding metal, so he unplugged one of them and handed it to me as I rushed out before he could molest me.

The next morning we were in line for Oprah by 6:10. A group of women behind us were from Washington, D.C. One of them was so obnoxious, droning on about her collapsing stock portfolio. To make matters worse her entire outfit was the same shade of purple from head to toe which really bothered me for some reason. She looked like a big lavender tulip. When they let us inside we were handed a bag and promised that there was breakfast inside. However, when we sat down and I looked inside all I found was a large cup of yogurt with fruit on the top and a cranberry muffin. Um, this was no kind of breakfast that I’d ever eaten. Where was the bowl of Frosted Flakes or the large cinnamon roll that I was used to? I slumped down and tossed the bag under my seat. On televisions throughout the large holding area were several television sets playing the Oprah 20^th anniversary DVD’s. (What else would you expect?) The woman right across from me was loving it. She threw out phrases like “human connection” and “how remarkable” as she watched. What had I gotten myself into?

A little before 8:30 we were led into the studio and assigned our seats in the far left section, directly across from where the Big O would soon be sitting. The warm-up lady told us that we’d actually be here for the taping of two shows. Twice the chance to see myself on TV and make Letty jealous. My excitement soon turned to disappointment when she announced that both shows were with Dr. Oz. I never watch when he’s on because I haven’t started to worry about menopause nor do I care what letter my poop is supposed to resemble. Later Oprah let it slip that we would be missing Nicole Kidman who would be there in the afternoon. We traded in an Oscar winner for a doctor who wears his scrub pants uncomfortably too high. Seems like a fair trade. When Oprah finally came out it was pretty exciting. I’m not a die-hard fan, but I’ve gotta admit seeing someone of her massive fame was a kick. Oh, and just for the record, from the looks of her it doesn’t look like she’s been eating that crappy “breakfast” she hands out to her audience. Just saying. The first show was about overweight teens, which was actually incredibly interesting. They talked about what foods you should and shouldn’t be feeding your kids. At one point they showed a video of one of the girls chowing down at McDonald’s. The audience was shocked at what the girl had eaten, yet I leaned over to Rachel and asked “Is it wrong that all that piece did was make me hungry?”

The second show was entitled “The Science of Beauty.” The uninteresting title can’t even compare to how truly bored I was during this. Woman came up on stage complaining about their adult acne and their hair loss. I wanted to raise my hand and ask Dr. Oz from a medical standpoint if it was possible to die from listening to middle-aged women drone on and on about the fungus on their toes. About twenty minutes into it I really had to go to the bathroom. I tried to go in between the two shows but the line for the men’s room was surprisingly long that I ran out of time. To make matters worse the Chipotle spicy beef burrito from the night before started talking back to me. For the next thirty minutes I squirmed uncomfortably in seat, knowing that if I ruined one of Oprah’s chairs she no doubt had the power to have me killed. Finally the show wrapped and I darted out of there faster than Oprah can devour three Egg McMuffins.

A step backwards for equality

Over the last couple of weeks we've been in the midst of a unit on the election where students have learned about choosing a running mate, taking an opinion poll, and what the heck the Electoral College is. Later this week the students will be researching and writing up reports about both of the presidential candidates. To begin this today we read two short articles about McCain and Obama. When students were finished I asked them to answer six questions about the men based on what we read together. One of the questions was "What was Barack Obama's occupation before going into politics?" We had read about how he had gone to Harvard Law School and eventually ended up as a civil rights lawyer back in Chicago. Well as I was grading them this afternoon one boy's response caught me off guard. I should preface this by saying that this boy is so ADHD that he makes Robin Williams look like a corpse. I shouldn't be surprised by his answer since most of his day is spent eating the erasers off of pencils and grabbing his crotch. So what was Obama's job prior to politics? "Barak Obuma was a slave." Somewhere Harriet Tubman is rolling over in her grave.

Trespassing

It's been a crazy exciting day around here as one of my Willow colleagues was "surprised" by Ty Pennington and the gang from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition this morning. Let's just say it was the worst kept secret in Pekin. Even the KKK rallies of the '60s that took place here were more hush-hush. When my own mom runs into Ty on the street the day before it's not like it's exactly being kept under wraps. No matter, it's a really amazing event for such a caring family. I've gotten text messages and voicemails all morning from people giving me up to the minute accounts of the action. Feeling left out, my third grade colleague Jeff and I ran over by Steve's house today during lunch. There was a side street that was blocked off but we thought it just meant for cars and such. So we're walking down the sidewalk when we pass the catering tent where all of the other designers minus Ty were eating lunch. We couldn't get through all the way so we hopped a fence (or four) and cut through some people's yards only to get busted by ABC security which escorted us all the way back to my car. I think we narrowly escaped getting arrested and I think this ruins any dream I had of being a guest star on Pushing Daisies.

A strange family dynamic

I sat down today to read a book about foods around the world with one of my small groups. This is one of my lower groups that needs a lot of help just building background and trying to think about what the book will be about. To help with this I made up a poster of various animals and asked the students whether or not these animals are eaten as food in different areas of the world. I jotted down their predictions along the side of the photos of snakes, bees, kangaroos, and bats. When I got to the fifth animal on the list, I asked if anyone thought people ate cats in other countries. Several of them looked around the table at one another, unsure of what to guess. Yet a big smile came across one boy's face as he thrust his hand high in the air. When I called on him he said "Mr. Ritchason, I know this one" as he nodded his head proudly up and down. To confirm, I repeated "So you think people eat cats?" "Oh, I know they do. My dad hunts cats with a rifle in our backyard and he puts the meat in the garage freezer." I should also add that this was the same man that was arrested three weeks ago for peeping into a teenage girl's window and trying to escape the police, so I guess nothing this man does should surprise me. However, it has taught me to always make sure Rachel and Ella close the blinds when they're getting ready for bed and to never accept an invitation from this family for Thanksgiving dinner.

An R-rated morning

This morning one of the girls in my class was supposed to be getting her assignment notebook out of her backpack yet instead pulled out some handcuffs. Naturally she had the attention of everyone in the room. Before telling her to put them away, I asked her where she got them from. After initially responding that they were fake, I asked her the question again. She went on to explain that she found them in a box in her 16-year old sister's closet. Now really there's only two reasons why a 16-year would have hidden handcuffs. Either you're fighting crime as a superhero when the sun goes down or you're the most popular member of the pom squad for some not-hard-to-explain reason. I'm thinking positive and hoping that she's Wonder Woman.

Today one of the boys in my class came up to me in distress, holding the book he had been reading about an expedition to Antarctica. His eyes grew wide as wide as he shoved the book in my hand and stammered "There's a bad word in this book, Mr. Ritchason!" I instantly got nervous, thinking back to my first year of teaching when I had assigned two girls to read Bridge To Terabithia, completely forgetting that the author had thrown in a "damn" and "hell" for good measure. After listening to one of the mothers berate me over the phone and equate me with some Russian dictator (To this day, I still don't understand the connection), I've been very conscious of what books I add to my classroom library. So I asked the boy to show me where he came across the offending passage. He flipped to it and read aloud "Siegal quickly took readings with compass and sextant." It should be noted that he couldn't bring himself to say the last word. I soon realized that he thought it read "sex tent." I explained that it was simply an instrument used to track the location of something and that it was not a frosty love shack formed from blocks of ice for two hot-blooded Eskimo looking to get it on.

You did WHAT in the bathroom??

In my class we have a behavior chart and if students misbehave they are asked to move their clip down the chart. Strike 1 is just a warning, strike 2 loses you five minutes of recess, and strike 3 makes you miss an entire recess. There's even a dreaded spot lower and if you move it all the way down there you get a note sent home to your parents. (Cue the Law and Order music here.) In addition to me writing up a letter I also make the student write a letter as well, outlining what he did to warrant said note. One of the boys in my class this year is a really sweet, endearing kid but has a bad case of the old ADD. He can't pay attention to save his life. Really. He could be gasping for air and wouldn't realize it until he was dead. Today by early afternoon he was all the way down to the bottom so I gave him a sheet of paper and asked him to write a note to his dad and stepmom. Usually when students write these they include the requisite "I was talking during the math lesson" or "I pushed Cheyenne in the lunch line" or "I purposely threw a football at John's nuts." After about ten minutes he brought the letter up to me. As I started reading his first sentence I learned that he was confessing to something that I didn't even know he did and if I'm not mistaken is an act that is still illegal in Vermont and one of the Dakotas.

Full translation (for those of you who don't have a Doctorate in third grade spelling):

I was squeaking my feet in the bathroom. I was yelling out the poem that I was supposed to read. I poked Leah, Arianna, Kevin, and Chloe. And I was not following directions. I was not listening. I was not behaving.

You might be a big fish in a little pond

Okay, so I've been watching this over and over again all week. It's the video for Coldplay's new song "Lost" which I think is awesome. They recorded this when I saw them live at the United Center in July. If you look closely on the right side of the stage you might see a certain tall, lanky guy doing the cliche white guy bobbing of the head while singing at the top of his lungs. Ya, it's that good.