Film at 11

ah, students

Hello, gentle readers. Some of you have recently expressed dismay at my lack of blogging. The more astute among you, however, will realize that we have just finished September, the month where much of Meredith's time is taken up with typing rosters into her computer. September begins, officially, a new school year, complete with the smell of freshly sharpened pencils, shiny new book covers, and ridiculous comments made by students. Here are a few comments I've received lately:

"Um, do we have to do a lot of reading for this Reading class?" (NB: this student did not return for a second day)

"But I don't have money to buy a novel. You mean, the library is free? But I don't know where the library is. Over there? But I don't know HOW to check out books from the library"

My ESL students are more charming than goofy. Yesterday, they asked me to define words like "gee," "to go on a date," "sleeve" and "maternity leave." They asked if "sexist" was the equivalent to "macho," and they were amazed that "lie" down was the exact same word as "lie" to your mother about where you were last night. Somewhat less charmingly, they also informed me that all feminists were lesbians. (If anybody has thought of a culturally sensitive retort to that comment, feel free to let me know).

In one of my classes, I have two brain-injured students, a Sudanese refugee, three dyslexic students and a person with juvenile arthritis and a chronic skin condition. In the same class is a student who has finished "Catcher in the Rye" and is starting on "The Grapes of Wrath" so that she "can have something to say about all the books you study in school."

So, gentle readers, here's a challenge: each of these students has to select an independent fiction book. Can you think of any titles that would suit such people? Send them in. In the meantime, I'll be correcting sentences like, "Stephanie was the Valid Victorian of her class because her grades were so good."

I should write a book.