Sub Plan: March 17th
I’m sorry I can’t be in the classroom today. I’m grateful you’re here. I teach three 100 minute blocks of 8th Grade English. I’m available any time for a text or phone call at 503-xxx-xxxx. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you are struggling with a student, or need clarification on anything.
We launched our Dystopian Fiction unit this week. There’s a Powerpoint already queued up for you to correlate with the lesson plan below.
1) Opening
a) Greet the students at the door. This is both a welcoming and body-blocking maneuver. El will try to sneak past you to sit on the couch and show off her latest TikTok edit. Remind El that if she is late to Chinese again, Ms. Chan will give her lunch detention. Ricardo (tall, light-skinned Hispanic kiddo, always wears a beanie) will insist he is a TA and try to get you to let him in. He is not a TA. Direct him to Ms. Richmond’s class next door.
b) Riley will refuse to come inside. As the kids complete the Do Now (entry task, slide 1), she will kick the linoleum and tell you she hates the class, that everything we do in there is “stupid” so she won’t do the work, that her classmates are “stupid,” that she is “stupid.” Tell Riley that the hallway is stupider than class. Tell her Ms. Dockins is sorry she’s sick. Tell her I’ll be back on Monday.
i) There’s a culture of near masochistic dedication at this school. Last year, my coworker Ms. Garcia supported the pregnancy of her former student, was at her hospital bedside during the birth, cradled the newborn at 2am, then came to work that same morning. For this reason, I have a hard time making an allowance for myself to take a sick day.
c) Encourage students to find their seats, a pencil, and something to write on. I have my own methods: “If we can all start this lesson with a writing utensil, I will literally give you each a dollar” or “If we can get every person to pull out their notebook before the bell rings, I will perform the entirety of Frozen’s ‘Let it Go’” or pretend to burst into tears when a student is still vertical after four requests to please, please, please sit down. Do what works for you!
d) Take attendance and check the seating chart. Josephine goes by Joe now but the official attendance sheet hasn't been updated for their safety at home. Fatima needs to sit on the opposite side of the room as Brittany because of their no-contact order. Niam will be absent.
2) Do Now, slide 1 (10 minutes)
a) Students write an interpretive question about their independent reading book. Remind students that interpretive questions are questions that don’t have one right answer. They require a reader to make inferences based on specific information they can cite, so they should include text evidence. Questions like: “How is the author’s motivation for writing revealed?”
b) Students share their questions with their book club groups.
i) After COVID, we noticed a significant lack of conversational confidence. They didn’t know how to turn and talk. We gave them sentence stems like, “In my notebook, I wrote ________” or “What I heard you say was _________.” This year, the kids can talk just fine. In fact, it feels like they never stop talking.
3) Lesson— Dystopian Fiction (20 minutes)
a) Review key elements of the genre.
i) Slide 2: Dystopian Fiction is set in a future where things have gone awry.
(1) This could be any type of terrible future. Each year, I write my own dystopian fiction short story to share with my students as examples of the genre. My first year teaching, the story was set in Okanagan, WA, in 2098, at the last gas station in the U.S.
(2) The next year it was about robot barbers. Not my best work.
(3) Last year, it took place in a distant future classroom starring a student named Santiago in an oppressive school district that has struck reading from the curriculum.
(4) I need student suggestions for this year’s story. As a starting place, ask the kids: What’s making your world a bad place right now? Take notes for me.
ii) Slide 3: Dystopian Fiction has characters who must follow specific rules or customs unlike the rules and customs of modern society.
(1) Discuss that this is complicated when dystopian texts become prophetic, or when our society’s rules and customs feel alienating even to those native to the culture.
iii) Slide 4: Dystopian Fiction has characters who break or challenge the rules.
(1) Riley may still be in the hall. Please check on her.
iv) Slide 5: Dystopian Fiction has characters who exert, resist, submit, or seek power.
(1) Give examples. Here’s a few:
(a) On Wednesday, the teachers wore matching red t-shirts. We gathered around the flagpole out front for thirty minutes before the first bell to have our picture taken by a representative of the National Education Association. Our union reps said it was a show of solidarity and strength against the Trump administration’s dismantling of the Department of Education (resist). But then news came the following day that he’d signed an executive order to shutter the whole thing (exert). So the fact that we’d all packed up our signs and walked through the front doors at 7:35am felt like hangdog acceptance (submit).
(b) Our show of staff unity was further undercut when the Building Leadership Team met to discuss the 1.00 Full-Time Employment budget cut. The staff shifted into tribal alliances, each group pitching why their department must remain whole, and insinuating fat could be trimmed from others (seek). When the principal landed on the Literacy department to absorb the loss, I did the mental math on who had the least seniority among us English teachers and, realizing it wasn’t me, said: “Okay (submit).”
4) Reading Workshop (20 minutes):
a) Our 100-minute block class allows time for reading in class. We moved to this extended Literacy period to address inequality– rich kids have more time than poor kids to read at home. Students from low-income homes typically have more responsibilities after school; caring for younger siblings, cooking and cleaning, working with a parent.
b) I’ve assigned students dystopian books I think they’ll like and are at their reading level. Their assignments are on slide 7. Some are classics (Handmaid’s Tale, Lord of the Flies, The Giver), others are contemporary (City of Ember, Unwind, Divergent, The Hunger Games). Remind them to write a response to the question they wrote for the Do Now. Remind them they are not allowed to switch books until they can accurately summarize the first chapter. If they are mad about this, remind them that I am ill and that they’re not allowed to be mad at a sick person.
c) Riley will have come in by now. She’s reading Unwind. She’ll tell you “it’s stupid”, but I saw her reading it unprompted while she was waiting for the bus after school yesterday.
5) Break (7 minutes)
a) The kids don’t leave the classroom during break. They will beg to go into the hallway, but do not allow it. If they need to pee, excuse them to the bathroom one at a time.
i) I lost a student in a bathroom. He was skipping class with his friends at the community center across the street. The community center’s security cameras were offline, so I can only approximate what happened based on what students have told me and what the police have shared.
(1) One of the boys had a gun (probably given to them by an older sibling), and they were posing with it, posturing. They started play-fighting like they do sometimes during break in class; pushing, shoving, and tackling in a half hug, half nelson. Someone pointed the gun at Niam. Maybe they didn’t understand how to use the safety? Maybe the safety was broken?
(2) The gun went off. Niam’s friends freaked out and ran. Niam laid on the bathroom floor and bled to death.
b) Watch them carefully. Yesterday during break, Marcos bit Kyla and nearly broke skin.
6) Students create their Setting Map, a drawing of the setting of their independent reading novel. (40 minutes)
a) Rubric with success criteria is on slide 8.
b) When I considered a career change following Niam death, my therapist conducted a career construction interview. She asked me questions about my earliest childhood memories, seminal books, movies, TV shows, and when and where I feel most comfortable.
i) I told her about the time I spent as a little girl in my room alone. I had a blue boombox playing Harry Potter and Princess Diaries audiobooks nonstop. I listened, drew pictures, and built Lincoln Log cabins for my Barbies.
ii) I told her about Survivor and how I’ve spent the last eighteen months watching the series from Season 1 to the present. I know I would be a first-rate “survivor.” At the very least, I’d make it to the merge. I can build an alliance with anyone– even the most teenage teenager– and possess an unyielding determination.
c) My therapist sent me an email with the results of the interview. She wrote: “You will be most happy and successful…
i) When you are able to be: creative, social, authentic, and challenged.
ii) In places where people: play, innovate and express.
iii) So that you can: use your gifts for good.”
d) I wrote back: “Lol, sorry to waste your time. Sounds like I should be a teacher.”
e) Remind the students that I bought the markers with my own money, and that if they destroy them there will be no more art supplies and they'll have to do all their remaining projects this year with Crayola crayons like kindergarteners.
7) Exit
a) Students put chairs on desks and clear debris from the ground. Don’t excuse them until their assigned seat is clean. The district has cut our custodial staff, so now we only get vacuumed once a week.
b) Give each kid a fist bump or a high five on the way out the door. Tell them to be safe. Tell them I’ll see them on Monday, or if they’re playing in the Ultimate Frisbee game, I’ll try to be there on Saturday if I’m feeling better.
That’s it for the day!
Just one more thing. My former student, AJ, might come in after school. His dad died in February but he hasn’t told me how yet. Yesterday, I helped him draft an email to Coach C asking for special permission to play in the game on Saturday even though he’s failing Geometry and U.S. History. Could you ask him if he’s sent it yet?
Thanks again for being here,
Ms. Dockins
-Gillian Dockins
Gillian Dockins is a essayist, educator, and vocalist living in West Seattle. She teaches 8th graders reading and writing in Seattle Public Schools. Gillian has been previously published by Under the Gum Tree, the Dorset Fiction Awards Anthology and Saxifrage Literary & Art Magazine.