Breakfast Club Flashback

One particular girl I've had the last two days reminds me of Alley Sheedy's character from The Breakfast Club. Her hair is the same and she is always bundled up in this old coat...which looks like it is from the 80's. I want to buy her a new coat so bad, would that offend her? Poor kid, smells like cigarettes, so apparently Mom and Dad can afford to smoke but can't buy their kid clothes. She also wears pants that are several inches too short. She clearly is at odds with the other kids socially too.

Reflections on communication with a 6th Grader:

I had these kids for a two hour language arts/ social studies block and they were working on 3 different writing assignments today: 1) summarization of a chapter 2) vocabulary words which included parts of speech and definition, and 3) a creative writing assignment.

A girl approaches my desk. Well, not just any girl but the Alley look-a-like.

Alley: "Ms. B, I have a question".

Me: "O.K."

Alley: "What are some other words we can use."

Me: "Use for what?"

Alley: "On our assignment. You know, other words besides non."

Me: "What kind of words?" (at this point I'm feeling VERY confused, I don't think I'm even hearing her correctly)

Alley: "Words like NON."

Me: "Non?"

Alley: "Yes, Non. Other words we can use besides Non."

Me: "Words you can use besides...Non??"

Alley: obviously irritated she squints and give me the evil eye. "YES! What other words can I use?!"

Me: "I'm sorry, I do not understand what you're talking about. I don't know what NON means."

Alley lets out a loud sigh, rolls her eyes and walks back to her desk. I watch, unhappy with her attitude, wondering if she will come back to clarify her question. I'm preparing to follow her to get to the end of the mystery. She grabs a piece of paper off her desk and stormily returns. She thrusts the vocabulary worksheet towards me, and points to the parts of speech column.

Alley: "This. Non!"

Me: "Ohh. You mean NOUN." I mimic her eye roll, in a very exaggerated manner to make a point...which she got. "Sorry I didn't know what you meant when you kept asking about a NON"

Now Alley looks embarrassed and says "oh"

I proceed to review the various parts of speech with her. I really felt like I was on another planet there for a few minutes, we had an absolute communication barrier.

On the good side- today I was passed a note that said Ms. B is cool! A student told me he loved me. I was hugged. Most importantly a student told me "Your ride is pimped!" when he saw my car (Probably Declan's Scooby stickers on the windows) 6th graders are really pretty great, fun age.