Chapter 10 #2
“Adjectives?” she asked the class. They shouted out the obvious word, “rambunctious,” and Jessica nodded her approval.
“The word those is also an adjective. It answers the question, which one? Which kids? Those kids. The word those is an adjective.” She chuckled at their groaning.
“Yes, you’ll be making up a few sentences illustrating this kind on your worksheet. ”
She clicked to the next page. “And then there’s the kind of sneaky adjective that answers the question How many or how much?
” She read the question. “The Titanic was on a transatlantic journey. The adjective transatlantic describes the journey. What does transatlantic mean?” And here’s where she both literally and figuratively held her breath.
She nodded at Liam. “Like going across the Atlantic Ocean, right?”
“Mm hmm,” Jessica affirmed with a head nod.
“It answers how much did the Titanic move? How many miles or kilometers? The trans part of the word means a change in location with respect to a starting point, Southhampton England, and an ending point. It was supposed to be New York City, but we all know it didn’t quite get there.
” She hoped they’d registered the word ‘change.’ The next sentence went up.
“The transparent glass let the artifact be seen but not touched. The adjective transparent describes the glass. What does transparent mean?”
She nodded at Emma. “See through.”
“Right,” Jessica said. “Transparent means to allow light to pass across one side, the starting place, to the other side which is the ending place, without interruption.”
A hand shot up. She nodded at Sophia. “So, the word trans basically means across, or like, movement? A change of some kind?”
“Sure,” Jessica said nonchalantly. “A transcutaneous cut is a cut that goes from the top layer of skin to the underlying tissues. The surgeon’s blade is moving, right? Across or through the skin. Changing where it is.”
Cries of “eww” and “gross” permeated the classroom, but Jessica just laughed.
“Worksheet time.” She handed out the assignment.
She’d already perused her first three classes’ work and had seen that several of them had used the term transgender in some of their adjective examples.
Mission accomplished. She felt good about her subtle lesson, but time would tell if there would be any fallout.
People were so ignorantly sensitive to things they simply didn’t understand.
When the timer went off, making everyone, including Jessica, jump, the worksheets were handed in, and the students knew that the next, bigger lesson was about to begin.
“Have you ever talked to yourself?” Jessica asked before shining the next lesson on the whiteboard. Head nods and affirmations answer her question. “Me, too,” Jessica said. “Just this morning at home, I had an entire conversation with myself about what to bring for lunch today.”
“Did you work it out, Ms. B?”
Jessica laughed. “I did, I did. And it was delicious.” She waited a beat and then said, “A soliloquy is when someone basically says their thoughts out loud. In a play, it’s a way for the audience to hear what the character is thinking.”
She clicked open to the first page of her Hamlet lesson plan, waited for the groans to subside, and read, “To be, or not to be, that is the question.” The first few lines of Hamlet’s third act soliloquy shone on the whiteboard.
She nodded to Jack, who was the first assigned reader.
She liked having her students read aloud.
It was a way for her not only to check their reading skills but also to gauge confidence or nerves.
It was difficult to read in front of your peers, and Jessica hoped to help them get used to being vocal in a carefully controlled environment.
As he read, Jessica made a note on her class roster.
Jack was fine. She halted him, asked another student to read, then a third.
All three were confident readers. Eventually, she’d get through every one of her students.
This kind of analysis not only caught problems students might be having, but it was also a good thing to mention in the ubiquitous parent-teacher meetings that PUA seemed to have.
She’d been to more of those meetings in the first quarter at her new school than she’d been to in her entire eight years in her two Cincinnati schools.
“Who wants to take a crack at what Hamlet’s going on about?”
“Does this guy want to die or something?” Sophia asked without first raising her hand. And that was okay. She hadn’t been disruptive. Jessica would make sure classroom order was maintained, but not at the expense of their learning and sharing of ideas.
“What makes you say that?” Jessica asked.
“Honestly, this language is weird and kind of hard to follow,” Sophia said and then pointed to the whiteboard. “But right there he says, ‘To die, to sleep.’”
“Ahh,” Jessica said and read the next two lines off the board. “To sleep: perchance to dream: Ay, there’s the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come?”
Several hands went up. Jessica nodded for Ezra to speak.
“I think at first, this guy thinks dying is kind of like sleeping, right? Like, hey, when I die, I’m just gonna sleep and dream.
But then he seems to second-guess it when he kind of says, ‘Wait a minute. What kind of dreams am I going to get?’”
Jessica was about to respond when a dozen hands went up. She nodded to quiet Maya. “What does ‘there’s the rub’ mean?”
“The word rub basically means obstacle.”
Maya’s hand went back up. “So, he’s saying something like, ‘so here’s the obstacle to my thought. I could have nightmares and not just sweet cotton candy dreams.’”
“Well said,” Jessica nodded. “All of you.” Even more hands went up, but she ignored them momentarily. “What does the opening phrase, ‘to be or not to be’, mean? I know you’ve all heard it.”
The students looked at each other, perplexed until Jayden said, “Oh, shit, Ms. B. Does it mean he’s thinking about unaliving himself?”
Jessica simply nodded.
“Whoa,” more than one student said. “That’s dark,” someone in the back added.
“This play was written in the early sixteen hundreds,” Jessica said. “Hamlet is a prince. And life is kind of overwhelming for him at the moment. He’s reaching a breaking point.”
“What happened to him?” Sophia asked.
Jessica leaned forward on the podium. “I guess we’ll have to read the play and find out, won’t we?”
Good-natured jeers were aimed at Sophia, who just shook it off and said, “Ms. B would have made us read it anyway.”
Jessica nodded her head in agreement and then settled the students down with a hand gesture. She outlined their assignment, reminding them that all assignments were listed on their online class page and also on the calendar, so there were no excuses.
“We will be watching some scenes, but not the entire play. And I caution you against simply watching videos and not reading. There is something to be said for digging into the literature. Reading Hamlet will help you get good at reading the ‘weird language’ which will, in turn, lay a solid foundation for your future English courses, so no skimping.”
She thanked the three students who read that day, wanting to make sure they understood that she appreciated their efforts.
The bell rang to end the class, and as her period seven students were filing out, her period eight students were coming in.
It was then that her supervisor slipped into the room.
Oh, shit. Had her subtle trans lesson already hit the fan?
Damn, she’d hoped for at least twenty-four hours before she’d need to update her resume.
“How’s the literary magazine coming?” Marjorie Whitaker asked. “Mr. Herrera wants something out by Thanksgiving.”
Jessica almost choked. “That’s a little under five weeks away.”
Marjorie simply shrugged.
Jessica remembered something Daddy Vic said in one of the posts.
‘Get help.’ “Has anyone here done a literary magazine? I need help. Guidance. I’ve never done anything like this before and haven’t a clue where to start.
” Was honesty really the best policy here?
She wasn’t sure, but it was the truth. She didn’t feel she could fake her way through this one.
“Not that I know of,” Marjorie said. “Best bet is to ask around and see if anyone can help you.”
“I will,” Jessica said, again thinking about the confident way Daddy Vic presented herself in the group. “But I seriously don’t think I can make a Thanksgiving deadline. Not if we want something of quality.”
“Which we do.” Marjorie narrowed her eyes and said, “You know, let me see if Mr. Herrera can find some funding to send you to a conference or workshop of some kind for this. I want you to look for one, preferably online or one within driving distance.”
“Sounds fair,” Jessica said. She would begin research as soon as this last class of the day was over. “Thank you.”
Marjorie nodded, grinned, and then patted Jessica’s arm.
Something had changed between them. What was it?
It felt like her department chair was showing her respect.
Maybe she respected the fact that Jessica had voiced her concerns about needing help and also hadn’t blindly accepted the Thanksgiving deadline.
“Wow,” Jessica muttered to herself and reset her lesson on the laptop. And, oh yeah, much to her relief, Marjorie hadn’t come in to tell her to pack her bags.
The bell rang to start class, and Jessica handed the timer to Arjun. She said, “Ten minutes of knowledge—”
“Gets us into college,” the students finished.
“Let’s do it,” Jessica said and began her fifth and final ‘woke-ish’ lesson of the day.