Talking about keeping the building in order. Cleaning up after ourselves quickly becomes a question of communal morality and personal ethics. The problems: How are we going to get all the science jobs done? How do we increase motivation? What is the reason we are doing this? For a prize or for the rightness of doing it. What is the right mentality? “What do I HAVE to do,” or “What I can I do?” Is it a question of people not caring or people not making the effort to completely demonstrate that they care? The lost and found? Is it working? Compost in trash? Are people prioritizing science jobs over regular daily jobs? Or are people prioritizing school work over jobs, or vice versa.
“We must be more mindful and expend the effort to care.”
“Grafitti on building and furniture. For me this is not okay,” says Donna.
“Why?”
“Because I care about this building. Because Gary Rutherford, my Husband, and Nick and Devlin’s Dad, built the building.”
“People are not doing their jobs or splitting the jobs instead of doing it together.”
“People distracting other people who are working on school work or cleaning.”
“It’s not fair how some people are given frownies. It’s kind of arbitrary.”
“When the room is trashed, it is because we are not being mindful.”
“Everyone is not honest about whether they have done a job or not.”
“People leave their binders everywhere.”
“We should be doing jobs together.”
Eric says, “When I have to be spending so much time cleaning up after big activities, it makes me not want to plan big activities. I don’t want to scale back the size of what we do, but I am finding that I have to spend so much time picking up after us that I can’t keep doing it.”
“When things get broken nothing happens.”
These are the problems. They must be stated before anything can be straightened out. It will take us the whole year to straighten them out. Then we start over again.
There is a planning going on for Hallowe’en. At age 12, 13 and 14, they are still in love with Hallowe’en. There is a string of emails about the class plans for Friday, about everyone wearing their costumes.
“Hey Everyone, Halloween is on Sunday, so we should all wear our costumes to school this Friday, the 29th. It will be a lot of fun if everyone wears a costume, so wear your costume. Thanks!!!!!! Love, Anna”
“I’d like to add that if you think that you are too cool to wear your costume- you’re not, and if u don’t you will feel sad and be shunned plus you will be missing out cuz its really fun. Love Aylee”
“Shun the non believers. from Tal”
“Tal, I believe, I will wear my costume with pride!!! Patrick”
“Also if you do wear a costume you get to be in the costume picture and if you dont wear one you don’t get to be in it sorry all you losers who don’t. Anneke”
“Shun the non believers! I am working on my costume now! Icarus (Tal)”
“Yes and if you are in the costume picture, future NBSers will see the picture, and know that you went to NBS. If you are not in the halloween picture, no one will know that you went to NBS. So even if you feel humiliated to wear a halloween costume to school, wear it, or else no one will ever know that you ever came to North Branch. Anna”
“Shun the non-believers Chaaaarlie, Says Miles”
"What Anna says is almost right. If you don’t wear your halloween costume, it will be that you never EXISTED AT ALL," says Tal
“Or slay the non believers. Aylee”
“Or wear your costume if you want to have existed. It is plain and simple. Anna”
Carving pumpkins on the patio. It is drizzling and gray, but there laughter reigns. Eric says this is the best activity ever, because everyone knows how to carve a pumpkin. There is something glorious about mastery, about knowing how you like to do a thing, about being able to carry out your vision.
“Scoop and flip,” cries Tsering.
Yared says he does not like pumpkins. He has cut his hand on his carver. “I don’t like how they taste, how they look, their color, the smiling or frowning faces, or their slimy insides. Tal, do you think Hallowe’en is a white people’s holiday?”
I cannot say whether this is true or not.
“Tal, I am making a Manga pumpkin,” says Ollie.
“Ollie, that is the worst pumpkin I ever saw.”
“Thanks, Tal.”
“Check it out Tal," says Rider, as he displays his pumpkin, Vanna White style. His pumpkin says "soul."
“Does that say “Scowl?” asks Luke.
“No, it says ‘Soul,’ you idiot!”
****
The topic of “dignity” came up. I ask if any could give a definition of it. I tell them the story I know about Robert E. Lee. How Lee made the decision to surrender at Appomattox, and when he showed up, Grant was waiting, ragged and unkempt and in mud-spattered boots, while Lee came ring in on his great horse Traveler, dressed in an immaculate dress uniform, with gold epaulettes, polished brass buttons, shaved and combed, his leather boots shining, sitting bolt upright in the saddle, his held high.
We discuss how this is an image of dignity, carrying one’s self with pride in adverse circumstances, of keeping the beautiful, noble parts of one intact even in defeat.
Dignity is a characteristic not normally associated with adolescents, but it seems to be clear to us what it is. And Characteristics are what we have been looking at for character sketches as well. What makes up a person. Mannerisms and manners. Habits of being. How one carries oneself. The secrets of a person only we can know or so. Their loves and dislikes. The secret to their being. A picture of all they are in body, and a description of the spirit…
***
It’s like Halloween Summer camp: Baking pumpkin seeds, popcorn balls, and pumpkin bread. Watersheds Charades, and all the costumes and characters here in class.
A doll, a fat tomato, two hooded robbers, Michael Jackson, A clown, Dogbert, Pippi Longstocking, a co-op shopper, Audrey Hepburn, a male bridesmaid, Rachel from “Glee,” Harold and Maude, Cindy Lauper, Leopold’s Mozart’s Ghost, Sherlock Holmes, Cinderella, Johnny the Greenhaven Worker, a Vermont Hunter, two Gypsies, Barack Obama, a Zombie, a cross-dresser (Rio in shorts), Winston Smith from 1984, the evil bunny from Monty Python, Matisse’s Icarus, and a pirate lady.
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