Taking One For The Team

One of the most vital qualities that can found in successful educational professionals such as myself, is the willingness to "take one for the team" or suffer immense amounts embarrassment in the name of the educational process. Last week was full of opportunities for we bestowers of knowledge to heap indignities upon ourselves so that the children might reach their full educational potential. In my classroom, the catalyst for teacher-humiliation-extravaganza was my all-time favorite narrative poem, The Highwayman.

The first casualty to suffer in the name of education was Iron Man. When I first started reading this poem with my classes, I would pick a female kidlet to dress up as Bess, the Highwayman's doomed love. The girls didn't mind the dressing up, but they did have a problem with having the drama musket tied to them to facilitate Bess's noble act of self sacrifice. So last year I tried dressing up boys as Bess, but that worked a little too well. They loved recreating Bess's death scene so much that we spent half the class period resolving disputes over who got to put on the dress and have the musket tied to them.

In an attempt to avoid those problems this year, Iron Man was recruited to "take one for the team" and be our Bess stand in. The kids enjoyed it, but at the same time were somewhat concerned for Iron Man's emotional well-being. A few even suggested that I invite the school counselor down to talk to him about any issues his cross-dressing episode may have left him with.

After reading the poem and acting out several key scenes, the kidlets were assigned to write a newspaper article. In order for them to write truly informative articles, the kidlets needed more details than the poem provided, so we held a press conference so that they could interview various witnesses to the events in the poem.

First up was Bess's grieving father, Mr. Lordland the landlord.

Once the kids had finished practicing their higher-order-thinking and questioning skills on Mr. Lordland, they were able to interrogate Tim the vengeful stable boy. It was Tim's tattling to the red coats that led to the deaths of Bess and her sweetie the Highwayman and the kidlets grilled him mercilessly about that. They also asked him why he was speaking with a southern accent when the poem was set in 18th century England.
Next came one of the red coats who had been present at both of the unfortunate deaths. Merv the soldier. The kids were particularly hard on him because, according to the text, the soldiers were drunk on duty when the tragic events transpired.

But even the kidlets disapproval of the drunken redcoat was nothing compared to the abject hatred they very quickly developed for one of the Highwayman's victims, the Grand Duchess Wealthina VonRichie. Days later, the kidlets were still complaining about how rude she had been to them during the press conference because they were"poor disgusting gutter rats."

But in the end, my two days of self-inflicted multiple personality disorder were worth it. The kids review valuable writing skills and practiced vital thinking and questioning skills. And some day, with a lot of intense therapy along with serious pharmaceutical intervention, Iron Man and I may recover from the "Highwayman" unit.

And it helps to know that I am not the only teacher in my school willing to suffer humiliations on a grand scale for the good of the kidlets. In February, we challenged the kidlets to earn 5,000 Accelerated Reader points and promised them that if they made that goal, our principal and the guy teachers would wear dresses to school.

Well, the kids ended up with 9,000 AR points, and the male role models at our school went above and beyond the call of duty...dressing up as Hannah Montana and her back-up singers to perform a special musical number at our talent show last Friday.

Talk about taking one for the team...

And this was after the state legislature voted to cut our salaries.

How much do we love our kidlets?

What would we do to help them succeed?

We care enough to "take one for the team" on a regular basis... and love every minute of it.