Marley was dead, to begin with

Yesterday I had the privilege of being a chaperone on the 7th grade field trip to see "A Christmas Carol" at the Guthrie. The kids have been reading the play in Language Arts class and supposedly heated arguments have broken out as to who gets to read the part of Scrooge. So they were pretty into it. Yet another reason I'd love to teach at RMS: free trips to the Guthrie every other year!

Anyway, so after 8th grade AVID tutorials (which reconfirmed my suspicions that Edgar Allan Poe should never be taught to middle schoolers from a biographical lens. Seriously, if I hear one more student say "He married his cousin!" I'm going to put a moratorium on Poe questions) I met one of the 7th grade teams in the cafeteria for an awards ceremony they do every month. What a cool tradition! Each teacher on the team (one L.A., one Math, one Science, one Social Studies) take turns nominating a student of the month and recognizing kids for things they've done in class. The Science teacher recognized and passed out candy bars to the kids in her class who had taken the most accurate measurements during a recent lab. The Social Studies teacher recognized a student who keeps himself from blurting out answers in class. All the kids seemed really into it, and you could tell the teachers really know and love their students. The reasons to get a job at RMS keep piling up.

After the awards, we piled onto the buses and went to the theatre. The kids were really well-behaved coming in and there were plenty of adults around, so I didn't have to do much except watch the play. The kids in my tutorial group seemed really embarassed to talk to me when they were around their friends (lame!), so I engaged myself in one awkward exchange after another with them.

Now, I saw "A Christmas Carol" last year and LOVED it. Everytime I see or read the story, I get more obsessed with it. Seriously, way to go Dickens. The play was exactly the same last year (same actors, including Elizabeth). But the play was somehow even better when I was surrounded my 7th graders. I mean, who else would think to "ooooh" and whistle when Belle kisses young Scrooge? Who else would jump a mile every time it thundered or the ghosts whispered "Ebeneezer Scrooooooooge"? And who else would be so excited when Scrooge hugs Bob Crachit at the end of the play that they got up screaming and cheering? I know most of the kids at Richfield have never had the opportunity to see live theatre before, but even the ones that have were SO EXCITED. Either way, I could tell the actors were just eating up their energy. The actor who played Scrooge, especially, was just hamming it up--I think he did a few extra skips at the end just for them. People often complain about middle schoolers being too emotional, but they were really feeling this play and I think that says something about adults' lack of emotion more than their excess.