The Giggles

A teacher at one of the high schools I sub at wrote a book about parents and teens and effective communication. She's looking for backers on Indiegogo. You can read (and watch her talk about the book on video) here.

Spring in eighth grade English means it's time for them to read The Diary of Anne Frank. Because eighth grade, we read the play version. 

Reading plays in class can be fun. Parts are assigned. If you have the right mix of kiddos, they can get into it. Some do a voice. Some get engaged in their roles.

Alas, with the hybrid thing, things are different.

Getting kiddos at home to turn on their microphones and respond is hard. Those that do often have background noise: dogs barking, babies crying, siblings making noise, etc. But since we have kiddos in class, we have willing volunteers to read. 

Okay, maybe "willing" is stretching it a bit. It's more like I told them they were reading, and they didn't contradict me. And with few kiddos in class, everyone in class got a speaking part, so it wasn't like any one of them were getting singled out. They all had to, ahem, suffer the same fate. 

Sixth period. I had four students in class.

Scene 1, Act 2 has eight speaking parts. I divvied up the parts so each boy got two roles. And away we went.

Only... Adam had the giggles. 

When he wasn't speaking (he was playing Anne and Miep), it was fine. The kiddos at home didn't hear him as he kept his microphone muted. But when it was his turn to read...

He had to try to gather himself together. Then he'd get a sentence or two out only to burst into laughter again. Luckily, he didn't have too much to do in the scene.

Why was he laughing? I have no idea. He blamed another boy's picture in the meet. (With cameras off, a picture holds their place on screen. Very few students use their actual pictures, so it was some odd image.) But I doubt that was what caused the giggle fit. 

Somehow, we made it through the scene.

With the at home and in class groups thing being awkward, I took some time to search, and I found an audio version of the play. 

The one day a week we're all distance (kind of a long story as to how the whole thing works), I teased the recording. I asked the class how they enjoyed reading in class. As expected, the in-class kiddos weren't so enthused about having to read. (The at-home kiddos rather enjoyed it, though.)

When I told them I had found a recording, the in-class students cheered. (Yay! in the chat counts as cheering.) But not Adam. Adam said he rather enjoyed reading in class. 

But the rest of sixth period were happy. It seems that they didn't get a whole lot out of our reading of that scene as the kiddos in the classroom did.

Not surprising, really. I could probably say the same about most things school-related.