Character Sketch
I had my current 7th grade class as 4th and 5th graders, but when I accepted a new position as “head of the middle school language arts department” at our school, I got them again. (Titles are so pretentious, aren’t they? That’s why I only make the kids use it when they’re making direct eye contact with me, which I rarely allow anyway.)
“Ugh,” I told them on the first day of school this year. “You guys were my least favorite class. I was
so glad to let you fly a couple of
years ago. And now I have to have you
again.”
They stared at me, unsure of how to react. Was I kidding? Should they laugh?
“Are you joking?” one of them asked me.
“No,” I replied.
They laughed anyway, pleased that they’d had that effect on
me in 4th and 5th grade.
Seventh graders are jerks like that.
Anyway, it is what it is, and I’ll now have them for two
more years since “head of the middle school language arts department” in our
school means “the only language arts
teacher for 6th, 7th, and 8th grades.” So we’re kind of stuck with each other, and
as I like to tell them—I’m lying right now; it’s they who have to tell me—we
might as well make the most of it.
I have to say, they’ve constantly surprised me this
year. In mostly good ways.
The other day, I assigned them a character sketch in which
they had to create and describe a fictitious character. I told them to think about their character.
How does this person dress? What are
his/her physical characteristics? How does he/she act? What happened in this
person’s childhood to make him/her this way?
My seventh graders are writers. This, actually, is one of the things that
surprised me about them the most, something I hadn’t picked up on as well when
I had them as elementary students. They
just seemed like they would be too COOL to enjoy writing.
But they do enjoy
it. And they’re self-confident enough to
not be scared to admit it.
“You guys are fantastic
writers!” I exclaimed one day, pleased as punch.
“We know,” they replied, pencils moving furiously as they
glanced up at me briefly—Why are you
bothering us right now?—before getting back to work.
When I assigned the character sketch, I gave them about half
the class period to complete it. To help
inspire them (because I’m nothing if not a person of complete and total
inspiration; they’re very lucky to have me), I shared my computer screen to the
smart board and began typing my own.
I got about two sentences projected when they started to
shout suggestions out so quickly that I could hardly keep up—and I type fast. When I clocked it last in high school typing
class 28 years ago, I was at seventy-three words per minute, just 7 wpm behind
the typing teacher herself. She wasn’t
too happy about that, but that’s a story for another post.
By the second paragraph, I was laughing so hard I could
hardly type.
When we were finished, I said to my 7th graders,
“You guys need help. Like serious
psychological help.”
Here’s the character sketch that endeared them to me just a
little bit more:
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