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You’re Making Me Yawn!

Marieke Steiner

    It was my first year of teaching “tweens” and on this one day for the life of me I couldn’t seem to keep my class engaged. The drumming of rain in a hypnotic rhythm on the windowpane probably wasn’t helping matters either. Then there was the fact that before me sat two dozen pre-pubescent middle-schoolers, many — particularly the girls – prone to melodrama. Just their sheer number was intimidating. And then there was the subject — Language Arts. Hardly anyone’s favorite and likely an extended snoozefest for most.
    In the first row sat Jennie, one of my star pupils. I suspected she needed to start wearing glasses because of the way she kept asking could she move closer to the blackboard. Now her eyes looked glassy and I caught her blinking away tears.
    “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Catching flies again with that yawn of yours?”
    “No sir,” Jennie, always polite, giggled. “I’m just tired, that’s all.”
    “At least you spared my feelings and didn’t say ‘bored.’ Promise me you’ll go to bed earlier so you won’t fall asleep in class, okay?”
    “Okay, Mr. Maury, I will. I promise.”
    I strode to the back of the room. “Hey Brad. You too? Can’t keep your trap closed either?”
    “Sorry. But Jennie’s yawn was contagious.”
    I knew this kid way too well from coaching him in Track. “Nice try, Bradley. But blaming someone else for your behavior — that’s not good. Maybe what you’re really trying to say is that this lesson on the parts of speech doesn’t hold your interest?”
    Brad stared blankly ahead so I turned to the rest of the class.
    “Raise your hand if you agree.”
    The rest of the students’ hands shot up at once. “Well at least I’ve got your attention now. Excellent. I have a couple of exercises for us to do that should be more fun.”
    “First I want everyone to take out a blank sheet of paper.” Groans erupted among the sound of books shuffling. “It’s not a pop quiz. Don’t worry.”
    “I want everyone to write one full paragraph of say, five to seven sentences or so, more if you want, that describes the act of yawning. Follow a yawn from beginning to end. Let’s get creative and employ as many of the five senses as you can. To refresh your memory, the five senses are sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch. Also, using strong nouns and verbs will help make the words come alive on the page.”
    “You can even make yourself yawn if you think that will help,” I added. “This isn’t for a grade, so you don’t have to put your name on your paper unless you want to. I’ll just be reading the best ones out loud to the class when you’re done.”
    I strolled around the room. “Okay, you can get started now.”
    Approximately twenty mouths began opening and shutting all at once, like a nest of baby birds at feeding time, while the students enthusiastically practiced their yawns. Arms stretched into aisles, backs cracked, and there were some exaggerated moans. Near the door one kid broke into an Indian whoop, placing his hand against his mouth repeatedly to warble the sound. He had to be taken into the hall to be disciplined. Otherwise, silence ruled as the rest of the class concentrated intently on the assignment. All that could be heard from the students who remained was the glorious sound of pencils scratching against paper.
    I started collecting the assignments from the back of the room first, suspecting that when I reached the front row, I would just need to glance quickly over Jennie’s paper to verify that hers would not only be worthy of reading out loud to the class, but be, by far, the best of the bunch.
    I was right.
    I leaned with my back against my desk as I read the following paragraph out loud:
    “It all started with a tickle way down in the back of my throat. A little stroke, the touch of a feather. Glug. I swallowed. My breath kept coming. It blew up in my mouth like a balloon. My ears popped. My eyes watered. Then Whoosh. My lips parted as the yawn left me at last. “Shew!” I busted out.
    A couple of students tittered. I chuckled myself and congratulated her on a job well done. We then discussed the strengths of her work as a class.
    Some of the other pupils’ treatments were good, too, but none rivaled Jennie’s. I read a few more aloud anyway and we discussed their merits as well.
    “Okay, on to our second exercise. It’s a lesson on synonyms. Does anyone know what they are?”
    No answer.
    “Is there anyone who doesn’t know?”
    “Two words that mean the same thing?” volunteered Marsha, ever timid, from the desk next to where I stood.
    I repeated what she’d said louder for everyone to hear.
    “In general, that’s correct. It’s a good way to remember the definition, at any rate, since both the word ‘synonym’ and the word ‘same’ begin with the letter ‘S.’ But synonyms are defined as two or more words that mean almost the same thing. The words don’t have exactly the same meanings but are similar – they have shades of meaning. If the words meant the same thing, then we wouldn’t need more than one of them, now would we? That would just be repetitive,” I explained “Who can give me an example of a couple of synonyms? Any two words would be fine.”
    Jennie raised her hand. “Since we’ve been talking about yawning, how about ‘yawn’ and ‘gape?’” she asked.
    “Very good. Anyone else?”
    “How about that one you used earlier to mean ‘mouth?’ ‘Trap’ I think you said?” asked Brad.
    “Good job. You really were listening then. Let’s hear from someone else now. How about you, Henry?”
    “When I yawn in church, my grandma leans over and whispers in my ear, ‘Shut your yap,’” said Henry. “So, I close my mouth. Right away.”
    Several kids laughed. Others grinned.
    I smiled. “Ooh Henry. How colorful. All right. Who knows which reference book contains synonyms?”
    “I do,” said Thomas. “A thesaurus. It’s easy to remember because the name sounds like a dinosaur.”
    “Definitely,” I agreed. I saw smirking and eye-rolling going on to my left and right and heard sneers and snickers in the back, behind me. My own son had outgrown his fascination with dinosaurs after age four.
    I went over to my desk and grabbed a book from the top of a stack. “Just for fun, why don’t we look up the word ‘mouth’ in the thesaurus?” I flipped to the page containing the entry.
    “It says here, ‘aperture, chops, jaws, kisser, lips, maw, muzzle and orifice.’ Those are all good descriptive words that can also mean mouth.”
    The bell rang but no one got up to leave. I looked around and noticed that the kids were all still in their seats with their eyes on me. Wow. “Now that I seem to have gotten everyone’s attention, the point I wanted to make about synonyms was that finding the right word or words to say exactly what you mean can make all the difference in your writing. To the good, naturally.”
    “If you’d like to do more writing, we can tomorrow.” Many faces brightened and several kids nodded. One said “Yesss,” with a fist-pump. Another, “Oh yay.”
    “Class dismissed.”
    The students’ chair legs scraped against the floor as they packed up their belongings, and they seemed to linger as they left. I sighed and wiped my palms on my pants. I’d successfully made it through another forty-five-minute session with my group of pre-teens and I’d managed to keep most of their minds occupied.
    Of course, I’d had to completely veer off the curriculum to do it. Necessity had indeed been the mother of invention. But the main thing was... I had triumphed.
    Victory was mine and it had all been in a day’s work.
    A school day’s work.

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