teenagers

Putting Toothpaste Back in the Tube

April 10, 2013 By The Well Read Hostess 3 Comments

I spent some time this week substituting in a 2nd grade art classroom.

Not for the faint of heart or slow on the hoof.

It was much like herding cats or trying to put toothpaste back in the tube. But dang, did we crank out some mighty fine birdhouse collages.

And second graders know how to openly express gratitude like nobody else on the planet. Unabashedly and full throated Thank YOU MRS DUNNING!!!!

They are also excellent helpers. They will get their friends scissors or glue sticks or show them the very absolutely right and not the wrong way to draw a bird.

Second graders will not let you get away with bad behavior. If you are, say, trying to make a cootie catcher instead of drawing a sun and clouds on the background paper of your birdhouse collage, make no mistake, you will be dimed out. But it is for your own good. You are being encouraged to walk a righteous path.

If you are sad about the way your birdhouse roof pattern turned out, a second grader will know how to console you. Second graders are excellent at compliments.

Second graders are good at sharing. Songs. Tape. Germs. Hugs.

When second graders get too loud during art class, they have “silent art time,” when they just concentrate on making beautiful things. They don’t mind admitting that they actually really loooove silent art time.

I spend most of my work days trying to either motivate seventeen year olds or teach seventeen year olds how not to be anxious messes because they are too highly motivated. I’m thinking that once in a while, I should spend some time making birdhouse collages with them. Maybe they would recall all of those important lessons they used to know about helping and righteousness and consoling friends and giving compliments and sharing and being silent.

Filed Under: Facts of Life, Keeping it Real, What I Know About Your Teenager That You Don't Tagged With: 2nd graders, birdhouse collages, teenagers

Pigs at the Trough

June 1, 2011 By The Well Read Hostess 4 Comments

One year I made gender rolls.

Last year it was a cake to celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday.

Today, and with no small amount of help from The World’s Greatest Husband, the kids* got a cake to celebrate the last novel of the school year, The Lord of the Flies.

Poor Piggy. My neighbor, the art teacher, suggested making red velvet cakes to really capture the gore. I liked the juxtaposition of cute pink piggy and red cake.

The cake, if you’ll excuse the heavy-handedness of the pun, killed. I used THIS recipe. The buttercream is so good that I re-copied the recipe below. When a pack of ninth graders demand copies of a cake icing recipe? You know you’ve hit on a winner.

If only the novel were as simple as the biological response to eggs, sugar, flour, and butter.

We study not only William Golding’s ideas about man’s internal struggles with good and evil, but Maslow’s heirarchy of needs, Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience, and Philip Zimbardo’s prison work from Stanford.

I feel almost bad about what I do to their innocence by the end of this unit.

Hence. The cake.

*Kids = students, not actual came-outta-me offspring. Although the offspring got their own mini piggy cake compliments of their dad, who is a saint and made it for them while I was off doing god knows what else. Probably licking pink icing off my arm.

Labor intensive yet totally worth it vanilla icing

* before you make this, have someone in your house or neighborhood sign an oath that he/she will remove any extra frosting from your house immediately after preparation. Otherwise you run a real risk of calling in sick to work and hiding in the basement in your pajamas with your face in the bowl. And that would just be embarrassing. For all of us.

6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups milk
2 cups (4 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In a medium-size saucepan, whisk the flour into the milk until smooth. Place over medium heat and, stirring constantly, cook until the mixture becomes very thick and begins to bubble, 10-15 minutes. Cover with waxed paper placed directly on the surface and cool to room temperature, about 30 minutes. Wax paper!?? Who the hell has waxed paper unless you’ve been pretending to be crafty-mom and making those things with autumn leaves that you iron.

In a large bowl, on the medium high speed of an electric mixer, beat the butter for 3 minutes, until smooth and creamy. Gradually add the sugar, beating continuously for 3 minutes until fluffy. Use the minute you shaved off the mixing time in the cake recipe and add it here. More beating the frosting = more better frosting. Yes. I know that’s grammatically incorrect.

Add the vanilla and beat well.

Add the cooled milk mixture, and continue to beat on the medium high speed for 5 minutes, until very smooth and noticeably whiter in color. Cover and refrigerate for 15 minutes (no less and no longer—set a timer!). Use immediately. Those are the exact words from the Magnolia Bakery recipe. They sound serious. I’d do it.

Filed Under: Facts of Life, I Just Make Most of This Up, In the Kitchen, What I Know About Your Teenager That You Don't, WRH Tagged With: Buttercream icing, gender rolls, Lord of the Flies, Milgram, pig cake, Piggy, Red Velvet Cake, Stanford Prison experiment, teenagers, William Golding, Zimbardo

Dear Graduates: What You and Abby Sunderland Have In Common

June 11, 2010 By The Well Read Hostess 15 Comments

Some of the most wonderful teenagers I’ve ever taught are graduating from high school tonight. In fact, some of the most wonderful teenagers I’ve never taught are graduating from high school tonight. They had a rehearsal for the ceremony this morning, but they’re still lurking around the building; as I write, they are playing games in a classroom, reluctant to leave to the building and all that the leaving represents, I reckon.

But they are ready. They’ve been ready for a few months. Subtle changes begin in the fall – fissures in friendships, shifting family relationships, and a sort of impatience with the status quo – but by now, there is no mistaking their need to get on with it, this business of living.

So,whirly girls, ready to head out on this great adventure, listen up for one more lecture. I know some stuff.

Get a job. Even a small one. Practice a hobby. Play a sport. Keep busy. If you spend time sitting around, you’ll think too much, and thinking too much is a bad habit for young, smart women. Trust me on this one.

You don’t have to know what you want to be when you grow up. Go to college and figure out who you are and what you love. The rest will work itself out.

Make friends with someone you never would have thought to make friends with in high school. You come from a small town. The world is big. There is so much you don’t know.

Along those lines, sometimes the family you are born into isn’t the family that supports and sustains you through the rest of your life. Sometimes you have to choose your own family.

I don’t know what the female equivalent of “Bros before Hos” is, but it ain’t that simple. Your friends are important, and you shouldn’t chuck them for a love interest, especially if it’s not The One. But ultimately, love is pretty damn important, not worth losing yourself, but worth some sacrifices.

You’ll know when it’s The One. You should try to go through some Not The Ones first, though, just to be sure.

Life is too short to spend time with anyone who doesn’t make you feel good about yourself. And nobody but you can make you happy.

Read. Anything. But Read.

Girls who don’t have other girls as friends are not to be trusted.

Don’t ever take a job just for the money. You’ll be miserable. And ultimately, spending 40+ hours a week doing something that makes you miserable is way worse than eating spaghetti four nights a week.

Stop feeling bad about your body. You will look back at pictures of yourself at this age and be furious that you wasted a single moment being critical about your own appearance.

Nine times out of ten, your mother is right.

The tenth? You’re not allowed to say, “I told you so.” But you will anyway.

Even if it’s not fully developed, you have a picture in your head of what your life will be when you’re grown up. It won’t be like that. And that’s OK. Because what it will be is better than fine.

When bad things happen, you have to grieve for whatever it is you lost. If you don’t, it’ll come back and get you in weird ways.

Dress your age.

Teach yourself how to be comfortable alone. Work up to being able to request a table for one in a restaurant. True fact: one of life’s great pleasures is going to a movie on your own.

If you wouldn’t want your mom to see it on the internet, don’t let anyone take a picture of it.

Laugh a lot. Seek out the absurd.

The right decision is usually the hard choice.

And, like Abby Sunderland, there will be people cheering you on, proud of you, and ready to come and help the moment you ask.

love,

Mrs. Dunning

p.s. Wherever I am, a drawer full of tampons and Tastykakes waits for you.

Filed Under: Facts of Life, What I Know About Your Teenager That You Don't Tagged With: Abby Sunderland, graduation, teenagers