Not A Compliment

Right now in writing I'm having my kids write poetry. I find different styles of poetry, or sometimes find a poem and have the students write their own version of the poem. It's a great thing to do at the end of the year, because there is no "beginning" or "ending" to the unit-we'll just write poems until time runs out. Poems are also a great way to get kids to work on word choice and desciptive writing in a less-formal structure, unlike an essay, say.

So the other day the students wrote "Feeling" poems. Bobby, who is a very smart boy, wrote a poem about the feeling of "boredom." He began his poem, "Boredom is dull grey..." and went on to describe boring things, like taking the state test. It was actually pretty clever. Of course, this kid drives me nuts, and he is the biggest pain in my side this year. And he's never sick. Never. My best two days of the year were when he was on suspension.

But he wrote this poem about boredom. Now, Bobby is capable of great things, but doesn't try at all. When I have my kids write poems, their homework is to type up the poem, print it off, and give it a colorful border by hand. If they don't have a printer, they can email it to me and I'll print it off at school. Bobby did the later.

I printed off the poem, and put it on his desk before school. Later, the poem showed up in the Homework Basket. The border was just a thick, lightly-colored border colored carelessly with a light-colored pencil. The border barely showed up. It was truly a boring border.

I went over to Bobby. "Bobby," I said. "This was a fabulous idea! Your poem was about boredom, and this is the most boring border I have ever seen! That was so clever of you! I would never have thought of this. Congratulations."

He looked confused. Was this in fact a compliment? I don't think he was quite sure...