rustypants speaks

this was the email sent out friday morning at school announcing our haiku contest winners… names deleted to protect the innocent.

______________________

My distinguished panel of judges and I wrestled with many entries and almost came to blows in our struggle to choose the top three haiku – here are the results!

In Third Place, Xxxx Xxxxxxxxx wins the lightly used Continental Airlines Barf Bag for:

Anticipation
Like puppy dog tail wagging
June, July, August

In Second Place, Xxxxxxx Xxxxxx wins Nunzilla for the following submission:

Awakening minds
Butterflies’ wings emerging
An Aha moment

And finally, the First Place Winner of the snarky office door hangers, Xxxxx Xxxxxxxx submitted:

Will someone teach boys
To pull up their sagging pants
No peep shows at school
_____________________________________

Honorable Mentions abound (as will Mardi Gras beads):

Xxxxxxxxx Xxxxxx sent:
Darn, It is Monday
WhY am I here? Oh that’s right
I Get paid Friday

Xxxxx Xxxx says:
That Crow woman canÂ
clean and jerk three hundred pounds!
sixty pounds, five lifts

Xxxxxxx Xxxxxx opined:
I wonder today
at the students’ attitudes
and ask, “what went wrong?”

Xxxx Xxxxxxxxx also sez:
Apathy abounds,
Stealing moments on cell phones,
Ignorance remains.

Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxx ventures:
Hazardous meeting
The blowhard passes me by
I feign diffidence

and finally, for managing to sneak in the name of our first female Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry, Xxx Xxxxxx declared:

What is in a name?
Edna St Vincent Millay
Poetry? Oh yes!

(Nancy Boyd wouldn’t have worked quite as well in that one, would it, Jay?)

Thanks to everyone who participated – it truly was fun to wade through the submissions and hard to pick the top ones!

Download Crazy Dolby

i don’t know what he would do

if he ever caught one

but it sure is funny watching

as he runs pell mell

and at least tries.

the following was an email i sent to the entire school this morning initiating a haiku contest…
—————————-

Win prizes and literary fame in the PFHSÂ Staff Haiku Contest!

Well, maybe not literary fame, but hey – prizes! Bragging rights!

The History:
I write haiku to keep from going insane. I keep a notebook with me in my backpack where I write my haiku as a way to keep my cool in the face of adversity and frustration (read: students and school politics, etc.). It’s a quick, fun, and easy little trick that I can do right in the classroom as I catch my breath, grind my teeth, and try to keep my hands from grabbing someone’s throat.

What Is Haiku:
Haiku is a Japanese form of poetry that consists of 17 total syllables split into three lines with 5 syllables in the first line, 7 syllables in the 2nd line, and 5 syllables in the third line. This is a simplified explanation of something that can easily be Googled, but for the purpose of this contest, the above makes sense, right?

Examples:
Last Friday was a bad day for me. 2/3 of the way through the day, I wrote the following haiku:

(5 syllables) Thank God it’s Friday?
(7 syllables) Hah! I laugh with contempt and
(5 syllables) Write mass referrals.

I write haiku when good things happen, too. The following examples include both good and not so good:

My boss, Frank Murphy
The best principal on earth!
Keep my job next year?

Awful Seventh class!
Rust stuck it to them, and how!
No compassion here.

Valentine’s Day is
anniversary of our
agreement to wed!

A friend of mine also writes haiku and we sometimes email each other with them:

The stone we do roll…
A task so Sisyphean…
Whiskey’s the answer!Â

And now, The Contest:
Be creative! Write some haiku! They can be funny, serious, concerned, worried, angry – whatever tone you want them to have! The only rules are:

1. Be sure to stay within the confines of 17 syllables broken into a 5-7-5 pattern.
2. Make your haiku school-related.
3. Submit as many haiku as you want!

Submit / email your school related haiku to me before the end of business Thursday (February 26) and my distinguished panel of judges and I will award prizes for the top three haiku, and several honorable mentions.

The Prizes (see attached picture for each item in all its glory):
1st place will receive a pack of six handy Office Door Hangers with messages like: Out To Lunch (and short a sandwich); Meeting In Progress (the practical alternative to work); Bad Day In Progress (enter at your own risk); and three others! Use these door hangers to warn students and staff of your current disposition!
2nd place will receive Nunzilla! This fire-breathing wind-up sister trudges straight out of a Catholic school student’s nightmare like a determined disciplnary force, with green eyes blazing and sparks flying from her mouth!
3rd place will receive a lightly used Continental Airlines Barf Bag / Seat Occupied sign.
Honorable Mentions will receive a strand of Mardi Gras beads caught and harvested this past Saturday morning on the streets of downtown Pensacola.

Go ye therefore and write!

Scott

so far? the entries are quite good!

…but without the wall

 lise and i collect seashells. lots of them. compulsively collect them. for 2+ years now, we’ve collected shells and shell pieces and have hoarded them in boxes and drawers and bags. we give many of them away, but dang, we just have too many shells.

a month or so ago, lise said to me, “let’s go through all our shells and take most of them back.” “BACK?!?” i said incredulously. “yes. back,” was her reply. and in the ensuing weeks, we went through all our shells, held back the ones we enjoyed the most (there were a lot of those) and made plans for exactly how we were going to return the others.

a mural. a sculpture. a sand-painting with shells. this would be the best way to return them: make art!

so two weeks ago, we hauled 2 years worth (maybe just under 100 lbs?) of shells to pensacola beach and began creating.

we picked a deserted spot, chose the best location and we got to work.

we had sketched out a sun design on paper before we arrived…

and the trick was keeping it even. we didn’t want the aesthetic ruined by sections off-kilter or too many shells clumped together in one spot. we didn’t want it to be TOO symmetrical or normal looking, though. the sun was retreating fast, so we had to double-up our efforts. things worked out perfectly, and we finished in about 45 minutes.

what took two years to collect were planned and laid out in just under an hour to the backdrop of a gorgeous sunset. it was a triumphant moment when we stood back and looked at our finished art project.

i honestly thought i’d feel sad about letting all those shells go, but it was such a fun thing. we really enjoyed ourselves and spent a good amount of time talking about what folks would think as they came upon this creation later. speculation, creation, satisfaction, companionship – it was all there.

we hung out for a bit, watched the sunset fade to black, and headed home…

Â

and began planning our next big seashell art project!

the list that has been making the facebook rounds with 25 random things about yourself – it’s vexing to me. i don’t want to do it. and i won’t

but this – this list is something i can do and be happy about!

25 favorite albums in no particular order

1. Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon
2. Jason Mraz – Live at Schuba’s Tavern 01-15-2003
3. Waterdeep – Sink or Swim
4. Herbie Hancock – Headhunters
5. Keith Jarrett Trio – Live at the Blue Note
6. Green Day – Dookie
7. Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds – Live at Radio City
8. Damien Jurado – Ghost of David
9. Cowboy Junkies – Trinity Session
10. The Band – The Last Waltz
11. The Black Keys – Chulahoma: The Songs of Junior Kimbrough
12. Chick Corea and Gary Burton – Crystal Silence
13. Iron & Wine – Our Endless Numbered Days
14. Jimmy Smith – The Sermon!
15. Joe Satriani – Super Colossal
16. Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin II
17. Mazzy Star – So Tonight That I Might See
18. Miles Davis and John Coltrane – The Complete Columbia Recordings
19. Yo-Yo Ma – The Cello Suites Inspired by Bach
20. Rusted Root – Cruel Sun
21. Phil Keaggy – Beyond Nature
22. Judas Priest – Screaming for Vengeance
23. Neil Young – Deepsix Vol. 2
24. John Coltrane – A Love Supreme
25. Grateful Dead – Live at the Fillmore East – 4-29-1971
26. Over the Rhine – Drunkard’s Prayer

i noted over on facebook that the honorable mentions list would be at least as long as this one.

what’s your list?

7th period is That Period. the bad one. the one that drives me the craziest.

it’s mostly a dynamics issue. 8 of the 18 just don’t belong together in one classroom. but alas, the room’s not big enough to separate them as they require.

so we’re at the tail end of an excerpt from richard rodriguez’s autobiography – i’m building to the climax, the epiphany, the “aha” moment when an entire period of childish, stupid behavior on the part of my sophomores and juniors leads me to shut down the class. i’ve had enough. i’ve already had to remove one student and was close to removing a second. six others are just being disruptive, talking, trying to distract me and others, texting on cell phones, arguing with my aide – it just sent me over the top.

so i informed them: you’re on your own. finish reading it by yourselves. the 30 questions? due tomorrow at the end of the class. i was going to do them with you – now? sorry. oh, and don’t forget the test on friday. now, zip it.

and the trouble students in the class managed to zip it for about 10 minutes. then a couple more referrals had to be written.

and my 10 students who listen, participate, and don’t give me crap? their faces were like, “oh, hell no!” but they kept it together and most of them started working on finishing the story and answering the questions.

and i was so damned angry on the way home. the extent of my anger was illogical, almost blinding. and i realized that what i did wasn’t fair to my non-asshat students.

so i stopped and bought a case of cokes and rootbeer and a couple snacks. i wrote out my list of students who were going to get got, and those who weren’t. i ran it all by my department chair and a couple others (thumbs up all the way) and then laid my trap.

and 7th period, students come in and see pop and snacks and eyes light up. especially those of the soon-to-be-banished. everyone gets seated and i wrote the names of those who would not be joining us on the board. to the rest of them i said, “grab a book, a desk, a pencil, and think about what you want to drink and eat, and let’s get in a circle!” to those getting the boot, i said, “you guys can get a book, a pencil, and paper, and go to the library where you’ll do all 30 questions, then study for tomorrow’s test.”

and the looks on their faces – it was indescribable. and frankly, the glee i felt at seeing it was probably inappropriate, the groaning and whining only adding to my satisfaction.

and the ten who stayed back with me – we took the exam together and had a good discussion about the main points of the book over cokes and snacks. and 10 A’s were given.

tomorrow? the other 8 get to take the test on their own while today’s group gets a free period.

i’ll try not to be so gleeful, promise.

“Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.” but in 7th period? i’m the lord. deal with it.

there he is! he’s doing his frank sinatra impression
while singing, “fly me to the moon!”

silly satan! viable souls are only found on earth!