People always talk about how the kids are the future. Education is so important, because in due time, the kids will be in charge. This can be an overwhelming feeling as an educator. There is a lot of pressure to make sure the kids are quickly becoming good citizens, not just the pressure of having them score proficient in MCAS.
The pressure becomes even more to bear when all of your kids are Yankees fans. I do my best as an educator to remedy this epidemic among urban youth. My morning message was all about Fenway and opening day. I explained what it meant. I explained how superior Fenway is to other ballparks. I explained our class was similar to Fenway in that right.
At morning meeting, we greeted each other with Happy Opening Day. One girl asked what this meant. I asked her if she had read the morning message I worked on tirelessly. My students were excited to tell me what big fans of the Yankees they were.
They were even more excited during Drop Everything And Read. I told them I needed just ten minutes of silence to read the sports page. They told me papers are for old people.
For math I had them compare and order decimals by comparing batters E.R.A.s. I told them I choose that question because the word average was a distracter. But really I just couldn’t think of anything but baseball.
For writing we took a trip to the playground. Writing started at two. I told them to look at the sky and write about it, because the sky above Fenway looked the same. They told me the Yankees were going to win, and I asked them who was pitching. I found the one outside outlet and plugged in my clock radio. They filled in their sports journalism worksheets. They had to have the Who, What, Where, and When. They needed to write down at least six interesting words the broadcasters used. They had to visualize what it must look like at the Park. And write about all of the sounds they heard. Three facts. And a hook. My principal came outside to see twenty students crowded around my old clock radio, writing vigorously against the concrete. And he didn’t say a word about MCAS prep.
The safety officer came out to see what all the commotion was. In his Yankees hat as always. I told him he was a bandwagon fan. His response, No, I grow up in Southie, but I’m not a bandwagon fan. I just like winners. I have been a Yankees fan since 1980.
Maybe for my next vocabulary lesson, I will explain bandwagon.
